Animals and Religion Print

Call for Proposals

This Group addresses issues in the study of animals and religion and seeks to engage religion scholars with the emergent field of animal studies. We welcome theoretically-informed individual paper, papers session, and roundtable proposals on all topics related to these themes. We especially seek proposals on the following topics:

  • For a possible cosponsored session with the Religion and Disability Studies Group, disability studies, animal studies, and the study of religion

  • For a possible cosponsored session with the Gay Men and Religion Group, gay male spiritualities and their relation to nature, especially to animals

  • For a possible cosponsored session with the Christian Systematic Theology Section, systematic theology and the question of the animal, especially engagements with David L. Clough’s On Animals: Systematic Theology (Bloomsbury Press, 2012)

  • Critical theory, animals, and religion, especially proposals on sovereignty and nationalism or responding to Jacques Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign (Volumes I–II, University of Chicago Press, 2010 and 2011)

  • Scholars, activists, and other animals — the relationship between scholarship and animal advocacy

  • Rethinking anthropocentrism, rethinking religion

  • African Americans, religion, and animals

  • Interspecies communication, collaboration, and coevolution

  • Dogs and the sacred — (im)purity, sacrality, and companionship

  • Animals at the margins (fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects, etc.) and religion

Mission

The purpose of this Group is to advance scholarship by providing a forum for scholars whose work addresses relevant issues in the study of animals and religion, and to engage religious studies scholars with the emergent field of animal studies. The Group emphasizes the theoretical implications of attention to animals for the study of religion and a diversity of approaches, including, but not limited to:

  • Cultural and comparative history of religions

  • Critical theory

  • Ethnography and anthropology of religion

  • Descriptions of the role(s) religious/theological traditions have played in mediating images of nonhuman animals

  • Assessments of relationships between religious constructions of animals and those animals

Anonymity of Review Process

Proposer names are anonymous to Chairs and Steering Committee members during review, but visible to Chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection.

Questions?

David Aftandilian
Texas Christian University
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Aaron Gross
University of San Diego
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Method of Submission