Call for Proposals

This Section strongly prefers paper sessions, not panel sessions. Paper session proposals should include specific titles and proposals for each paper. Few individual paper proposals are accepted. Please contact listed organizers if you wish to take part in any proposed session. Where no organizer is identified, we welcome someone to take on that role. Suggested themes are:

• The impact of print technology in the nineteenth century (Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Diaspora South Asian religions in California (Eliza Kent, Colgate University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Defining suicide? (William P. Harman, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Hinduism, hippies, and California
• Babri Masjid in 2011 (Brian K. Pennington, Maryville College, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Zakir Hussain, fusion, and groovy South Asia (Deepak Sarma, Case Western Reserve University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Textual representations of haute cuisine in India (James McHugh, University of Southern California, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Tony Stewart’s work across the Hindu–Muslim Border (John Hawley, Columbia University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• The Religion in South Asia Section and pluralism, climate change, and social justice (Pankaj Jain, University of North Texas, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• South Asian film as interpreter of South Asian religion (Lyone Fein, Denison University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Madeleine Biardeau’s work
• Horror and the grotesque
• “Shamanism” as heuristic category (Brian Collins, University of Chicago, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Gender and performance (Elaine Craddock, Southwestern University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Disgust/revulsion as meditation tools (Christopher Handy)
• Nonelite religious responses to colonialism (Rick Weiss)
• Mughal Bhakti (Patton Burchett, Columbia University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Hinduism and discrete emotions (Thomas B. Ellis, Appalachian State University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Performing the divine in Indian classical dance (Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Emory University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Mimamsa, mantras, meaning, (maha)devatas, and mendacity (Purushottama Bilimoria, Deakin and Melbourne, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Future of the “Classical” in the study/teaching of South Asian religions (Steven Lindquist, Southern Methodist University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• National identity and religious pluralism
• Installation/consecration ceremonies (Nawaraj Charlagain, Harvard University, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• David White’s yoga in practice (Stuart R. Sarbacker, Oregon State University, 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 long-standing 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. The scholarship we sponsor at the Annual Meeting 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

Proposals 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

M. Whitney Kelting
Northeastern University
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Method of Submission