Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Print

Call for Proposals

This Group invites individual paper, papers session, and roundtable proposals that critically examine modes of response to religious pluralism from multiple disciplinary perspectives. We welcome proposals that are interdisciplinary, incorporate alternative pedagogies of presentation, make use of new media, and reflect the dialogical nature of this field. We invite proposals in the following areas:

  • Mapping the discourse of interreligious studies — to map the contours of this field, we welcome critical examination of the use of terms such as interfaith, interreligious, multifaith, etc.

  • Critical reflection on race and gender in the interfaith movement

  • Environmentalism and the interfaith movement

  • Interreligious dialogue and new media

  • Interreligious dialogue and performance studies

  • Interfaith pedagogies

  • Theologies of interreligious encounter

  • Models of interfaith engagement in Baltimore

  • For a cosponsored session with the Christian Spirituality Group, in a religiously diverse world, increasingly people from different religious traditions are coming together to create coalitions to protect and restore their local ecosystems. We invite proposals exploring the impact of this intersection of environmentalism and interfaith cooperation on environmentally-oriented spiritualities and/or the spirituality of particular religious traditions. Proposals that include alternative formats or modalities for engaging these questions (beyond a twenty-minute paper) are particularly welcome

  • For a cosponsored session with the Religion and Politics Section, Contemporary Islam Group, and Religions, Social Conflict and Peace Group, proposals that critically and creatively examine the methodology and impact of different interreligious responses to moments of civic unrest or violence in a religious context

Mission

This Group creates a space for critical interdisciplinary engagement with interfaith and interreligious studies, which examines the many modes of response to the reality of religious pluralism (theological, philosophical, historical, scriptural, ethical, praxological, and institutional). This Group will:

  • Expand and enrich the modalities of interreligious and interfaith discourse in a diverse set of academic disciplines that have grappled with religious pluralism

  • Give voice to what has already been happening for years at the cutting-edge of institutional and pedagogical innovation and at the intersection of the academy and civic engagement in many disciplines

Our intention is that this Group will encourage the rigorous analysis necessary to establish the contours of this emerging field. A crucial first step involves systematic attention to common terminology (interfaith, interreligious, engaged pluralism, multifaith, multireligious) and the intersection of these terms with the disciplinary approaches that are increasingly using this language (interfaith just peacemaking, comparative theology, and scriptural reasoning). Similarly, we will encourage critical analysis of both national and international interfaith organizational models and other praxis-oriented responses to religious pluralism.

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?

Jennifer Peace
Andover Newton Theological School
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Homayra Ziad
Trinity College
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Method of Submission