Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Unit
For the 2023 meeting, we seek proposals related to the purpose of our unit with attention to four specific themes:
- For a potential co-sponsored session with Lesbian-Feminisms and Religion, The units seek proposals for a retrospective on Lauren Berlant’s work with a focus on their later work, namely On the Inconvenience of Other People.
- We seek proposals for a potential panel on fat studies in religion in conversation with the following questions: what possibilities does fat theorizing hold for our imaginations of intersections between feminisms and disability?; what do fat bodies teach us about human relations with the more-than-human environment?; how does fatness help us theorize subjectivity with more depth and complexity? We are especially interested in proposals in conversations with religious traditions beyond Christiantity.
- In conversation with AAR’s 2023 presidential theme, La Labor de Nuestras Manos, we seek proposals related to care work in medical contexts. We are particularly interested in proposals that consider the impact of normative assumptions on care work in medical contexts and proposals that consider the harms that are often done in the name of care.
- Also in conversation with AAR's 2023 presidential theme, we seek proposals related to ecological care work and indigenous epistemologies, especially as efforts to redress extractive capitalism and settler colonial logics.
This Unit has consistently provided programmatic space for a wide variety of feminist theories, including feminist theology, queer theory, continental feminist theory, feminist political theory, etc., as these intersect with a broad understanding of “religious reflection”, including institutional religious settings, or intersections of religion and culture, religion and aesthetics, religion and the body, and religion and nature. As the 21 century commences, FTRR will plan to invigorate feminist analyses of religious discourse within a global setting. Urgent concerns include forms of religious violence and climate crises, among others.