Psychology, Culture, and Religion Unit

Practical and Theoretical Responses to Suicide and Suicidality at the Intersection of Psychology and Religion. This panel will focus on the implications of the significant rise in suicides and suicidality in recent years, including differences among groups of identification and belonging (age, gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity, immigration status, etc.). Topics might include working clinically or pastorally with survivors of attempted suicide or survivors of those who have died by suicide, psychological and religious issues of stigmatization and shame, and the effects on family, friends, and communities.

Swiping, Tapping, and Scrolling: The Psychological and Religious Implications of Social Media and Digital "Embodiment". This call engages the impact of social media and the physical/embodied reality of "swiping, tapping, and scrolling" on mental health, religious identity and belonging, and communal life. How has this reality affected individual psychology, relationships, and religious identity and formation?  What are the psychological and religious impacts across groups and/or communities of this different "work of our hands?"

The Expressive Work of our Hands in Healing: The Arts, the Body, the Earth. This call engages the issues of embodied cognition, embodied healing, and the physical work of our hands. How does engagement with expressive arts and embodied practices (painting, sculpting, crafts, dance, music, gardening, farming, cooking) or other forms of physical labor/enjoyment facilitate psychological and religious healing or transformation? What is unique about "making" that impacts religious/psychological healing or formation? Creative/body-focused proposals welcome.

AAR/PCR at the Border: Psychological and Religious Perspectives on Borders, Margins, and Crossings. The ongoing realities of migration, immigration, displacement continue to raise multi-dimensional issues around marginalization, suffering, justice, and the work of care. What is the work of our hands in relation to these realities? Papers might engage themes related to being turned away and being welcomed, identity migration and identity formation, the creation of centers and margins, or other associated themes.

Psychological, Religious, and Pedagogical Engagement with "DEI" Paradigms in the Classroom and Beyond (Co-sponsorship with Transformative Scholarship and Pedagogy Unit). What does it mean to successfully engage diversity, equity, and inclusion in a classroom or institutional setting in a way that is transformative? This panel invites critical engagement from psychology, religion, and pedagogical perspectives in relation to both the value and limits of DEI paradigms for rectifying power imbalances and other issues in pedagogical spaces. What does transformative pedagogy in relation to DEI concerns look like? How might DEI paradigms contribute to equitable and inclusive change or does the focus on DEI let institutions and/or faculty off the hook for deeper work on decolonizing the academy?