Kierkegaard and Incarceration

American Academy of Religion

 In-person Annual Meeting, November 22-25 in Boston, MA

Following the 2025 American Academy of Religion Presidential Theme focused on “Freedom,” the Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture Unit invites papers on the topic of “Kierkegaard and Incarceration.” 

After a decrease and hiatus following the Covid-19 pandemic, the world prison population is again on the rise. The United Nations estimates that 11.5 million people (144 out of every 100,000 human beings) were confined globally in 2022, a third of them in pre-trial detention. The highest incarceration rate is in the United States, where women, minorities, and the poor are among the populations most targeted for incarceration and the systemic and societal inequities that lead to confinement. Within his journals and published writings, Kierkegaard writes extensively on the meaning and importance of the concepts of freedom and unfreedom, and the relation and responsibility of one who experiences freedom to the person facing a lack of freedom, including the imprisoned human being. Whereas modern imprisonment relies on the maintenance and increase of mass incarceration through the unseen or unspoken, Kierkegaard writes about the condition of the prisoner and society as related, intersecting, and dependent in the desire and formation of proper relations to freedom, justice, and love.  In his writings, he reflects on matter such as the longing [længsel] of the person who is free and the longing of the person in prison [fængsel], the demonic, the solitary lifetime prisoner, the demand of justice, the man of inclosing reserve, sorrow, anxiety, despair, the courtroom, the jailer, interrogation, the captive in the idea of God. We seek papers covering the topic of Kierkegaard and Incarceration, and the impact of unfreedom on human beings inside and outside of carceral spaces, including, but not limited to, submissions that address the following:

• How might Kierkegaardian concepts positively shape contemporary thinking about incarceration?

• What is the relationship of God and Christianity to freedom, unfreedom, and confinement in the writings of Kierkegaard? 

• Given that freedom of religious expression is one of the few rights maintained by prisoners, what is the place of religion, religious practice, and religious education in the prison? 

• What is the obligation of those who are free to those who are unfree? How does one who is free genuinely advocate on behalf of the unfree? 

• How have Kierkegaard’s writings influenced thinkers who have written on prisons, incarceration, and domination, systemic inequities within criminal justice? 

• As prisons deal with issues of rehabilitation, victim-offender reconciliation, healthcare, disproportionate suicide and homicide rates, gender-affirming care, family separation, deportation, violence, and reintegration, what are the possibilities for Kierkegaardian thought to contribute to discourses seeking improvement, change, or abolishment? 

• How does Kierkegaard’s anxiety about the good relate to the “Good Lives Model” of prison reform?

• How might Kierkegaardian thinking engage with contemporary scholarship on incarceration and the carceral experience?

Deadline: March 3, 2025

https://papers.aarweb.org/

We also seek papers in the following areas:

Religion and Literature in the Nineteenth Century 

The objective of this session is to explore how religious ideas connect with the broader world of literature in the nineteenth century. Recent works in nineteenth-century literary studies increasingly acknowledge the critical role of religion, but the analyses of literary works from this era often sideline specifically theological reflections. This session seeks to illuminate the intrinsic relationship between religion and literature in the nineteenth century, encouraging paper proposals that investigate this relationship from a theological perspective. The works of nineteenth century authors grappled with themes such as the divine; the infinite versus the finite; ethical living; the problem of evil and other paradoxes inherent in Christian beliefs; the nature of faith; the role of imagination for spiritual understanding; and the nature of religious experience.

We invite papers that explore these and other themes in fresh ways and thereby contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between religion, theology, and literature. Papers might engage various literary, religious, and theological authors in the nineteenth century, such as L. Tieck, W. Blake, F. Dostoevsky, G. MacDonald, and others, including authors from the global South. Papers on S. Kierkegaard and literature would be particularly welcome.

“Is there such a thing as a Christian Nation?” Cultural Christianity and Historical Progress

The idea of “cultural Christianity” as a social good has seen a resurgence among contemporary nationalists who see the active promotion of Christian culture or society as an important aspect of social progress. This notion of a culturally normative Christianity, together with the idea of Christian society in advancing historical progress, also plays a prominent role in the works of both Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Kierkegaard’s penetrating criticism of cultural Christianity aims to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom and nominally Christian society. And while Schleiermacher is often described as founding the cultural Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus) that dominated late nineteenth-century theology, his own writings recognize the inescapable tensions and dangers in the concept of the modern Christian nation-state.

This session calls for proposals, for individual papers or panels, that engage these complex themes in the writings of Kierkegaard and/or Schleiermacher. Topics for proposals might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The notion of historical progress in the writings of Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher
• The theme of ‘Christian society’ in the work of Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher
• The role of subjectivity in the life of faith
• Kierkegaard’s critique of ‘Christendom’
• Schleiermacher on the ‘Christian state’
• The influence of Luther on Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher in their responses to questions of church, society, and state
• Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher on Hegel’s treatment of religion and the Christian state
• Cultural Protestantism and the comparative study of religion
• Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard as resources for critiquing contemporary expressions of cultural Christianity and Christian nationalism

Deadline: March 3, 2025

https://papers.aarweb.org/