Re-Envisioning Religious Studies As A Global Discipline
The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory and the University of Denver in conjunction with its partner faculty researchers abroad is sponsoring a two-day symposium prior to the American Academy of Religion meeting on the topic “Re-Envisioning Religious Studies As A Global Discipline” The purpose of the symposium is to re-envision the field of Religious Studies as an emergent, operative, genuinely global discipline that is neither predominantly “Americocentric” nor beholden largely to, or segmented by, the specialties, topical interests, and methodologies that have prevailed in recent decades.
The symposium will also press the fundamental question of whether Religious Studies can ever become a coherent and clearly defined academic discipline and, if so, how that might happen.
Presenters will not be expected to give finished papers, but to prepare carefully crafted and condensed written statements of no less than 1500 words – and no more than 2500 words – that respond directly to one or more of the following prompts:
- To what degree is the current field of Religious Studies reflective of the complexity, diversity, and dynamics of human religiosity worldwide today as well as in more recent historical settings?
- What are the major theoretical, structural, and/or politico-economic as well as institutional factors that pose challenges to re-envisioning Religious Studies in an appropriate form as we move well into the twenty-first century?
- What curricular, organizational, conceptual, or professional strategies do you think need to be implemented to make Religious Studies into a viable and impactful global discipline? What might be some current examples of how such strategies are already in place?
- What intellectual figures, bodies of literature, or methodological resources, should the current field be utilizing, or taking more seriously than it has in the past, to achieve the aforementioned aims? Explain in detail