Religion in South Asia Print

Call for Proposals

This Section gives strong preference to papers sessions (not roundtable sessions). Proposals for papers sessions should include specific titles and proposals for each paper included in the session. We give preference to proposals for entire sessions over individual papers and accept few individual paper proposals. Although all topics are welcome, we are particularly interested in the themes listed below. Please contact the listed organizers if you wish to contribute to the following themes (where no organizer is identified, we welcome someone to take on that role):

  • Pierre Bourdieu and the study of South Asian religions — Jack Llewellyn, Missouri State University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Politics of religious conversion — Chad Butler, Butler University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Reading colonial/postcolonial theory and South Asian texts — Stephen Berkwitz, Missouri State University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Translational bhakti: poetry/song in South Asian regions and languages — John Stratton Hawley, Barnard College, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Reductive claims of cognitive science in religious studies — Michael James Gressett, Florida Gateway College, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Divine–Human–Cosmic relations: perspectives and pedagogies in comparative religion — James Ponniah, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Sectarianism and sectarian conflict — Elaine Fisher, Columbia University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Prayer in South Asia — Hamsa Stainton, University of Kansas, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • Is there a Nepalese way of being religious? — Jessica V. Birkenholtz, Rutgers University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

  • The future role of area studies in the study of religion, specifically RISA’s role — Donald R. Davis Jr., University of Wisconsin, Madison, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Mission

This Section’s mission is to provide a venue for new and important research in the many religious cultures, texts, and histories of South Asia. Within the area of South Asia, all world religions exist in unique forms, from religions that originated in India — such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Tantra, and tribal religions — to religions that have taken on longstanding and distinctive forms in South Asia — such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. The focus of our work is thus on a geographical area, the religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of that area, and changes that have occurred in those traditions over several millennia. Scholars of South Asia explore the distinctive manifestations of religious traditions in the subcontinent, their interactions, and their movements to and expressions in other parts of the world. This Section encourages contextualizing religion within debates on a broad array of parallel and intersecting issues, such as (but not limited to) politics, secularism, literature, philology, globalization, modernity, colonialism and postcolonialism, history, society, media, popular culture, material and visual culture, and economics. Our scholarship often emphasizes sessions and papers that look at more than one tradition and thus frequently entail some degree of comparative approach. Our Website is www.montclair.edu/RISA. We also have a listserv, which is essential to the work of our Section. Information on joining the listserv can be found on our Website.

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?

Donald R. Davis
University of Wisconsin, Madison
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Valerie Stoker
Wright State University
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Method of Submission