Childhood Studies and Religion Unit
The Childhood Studies and Religion Unit welcomes proposals for individual papers and sessions that engage the intersection of religion and childhood or children, broadly construed. We are especially interested in proposals from non-Euro-American and non-Christian perspectives, and we welcome a range of methodologies from across the humanities and the social sciences.
For the 2024 AAR Annual Meeting, we hope to organize sessions around one or more of the following topics:
Re-imagining Eschatology: Pediatric Hope, Chronic Illness, and Children's Experiences
A book panel that engages Duane Bidwell's new text After the Worst Day Ever: What Sick Kids Know About Sustaining Hope in Chronic Illness offers an opportunity to re-imagine hope, eschatology, chronic illness, and healthcare from the perspective of children, asking, "What do sick children know about hope that the rest of us have forgotten?" The book uses grounded theory to identify five practices that children with end-stage renal disease use to nurture hope: realizing community, claiming power, attending to Spirit, choosing trust, and maintaining identity. Scholars and practitioners who would like to participate in the panel conversation should send a brief description of their interest to Duane Bidwell at duane.bidwell@gmail.com
Children, Childhood, and Disability
How are disabled children represented across different times, places, and traditions? How do they appear (or disappear) in religious spaces? Is it possible to separate the study of children and disability from the long history of infantilizing people with disabilities?
Theologies of Child Well-Being
What would it mean to devote sustained attention to children in religious and theological studies? What could sustained theological and religious reflection secure for children that might promote their thriving in a world not ergonomic, a world even sometimes hostile, toward them?
If you are interested in proposing a session that is not listed above, we welcome panel and roundtable proposals. In your submission, please indicate the type of session you are proposing (panel or roundtable). Innovative and interactive sessions are especially welcome, and our co-chairs are happy to discuss what category might best fit any given proposal. In keeping with our commitment to presenting diverse perspectives and voices in each of our sessions, we also urge you to indicate what types of diversity your proposal or participants might represent.
This Unit’s overall aim is to investigate the complex and multifaceted relation between religion and childhood. The specific goals of the Unit are as follows: • Provide a forum for focused interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue about the diverse relations of children and religion • Heighten academic interest in this topic in all fields represented in the AAR • Prepare scholars in religious studies to contribute to wider academic discussions about children and childhoods • Lend the voice of the academy to current questions of public policy and child advocacy The focus of the Unit is both timely and significant given the present concern for children across the globe and the rising interdisciplinary academic interest in childhood studies. The Unit functions as a forum at the AAR for advancing childhood studies as a line of scholarly inquiry; we also welcome collaborations with other AAR program units for which childhood studies represents a "new" intervention.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Wendy Love Anderson | andersonwl@wustl.edu | - | View |
| Kishundra King, Iliff School of Theology | kking@crcds.edu | - | View |