Religion in Southeast Asia Unit
The Religion in Southeast Asia Program Unit at the American Academy of Religion invites proposals for individual papers, paper sessions, and roundtables. For those interested in proposing organized paper sessions, we would encourage you to consider a 90-minute session.
We invite proposals on all topics. Here are some topics generated at our 2023 business meeting:
- Cosmologies of revolution
- Liberation movements / social movements
- How Gaza issue affects SEA
- Missing bodies
- ASEAN Politics and South China Seas
- Session on Faizah Zakaria’s The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Southeast Asia (2023)
- Session on Briana L. Wong's Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience (2023)
Situated at the nexus of several civilizational influences—including Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern—Southeast Asia, as a region, remains understudied in terms of its relevance to the theoretical and methodological study of religion. This neglect is in part due to the tendency to reduce Southeast Asian religious systems to the named “world religions” often identified with other regions. As a result, indigenous practices are not viewed in terms of their conceptual and other linkages—and in some cases the dynamic interactions between those practices and the religious practices brought over by different classes of immigrants are frequently overlooked. However, and especially in the last fifteen years, exciting materials addressing different religious cultures in Southeast Asia have emerged. Hitherto, there has been little scholarly conversation at the AAR on Southeast Asia. And, perhaps even less commonly, are Southeast Asian religious cultures (e.g., Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Hindu, “animist,” Chinese, and Pacific) put into conversation with one another. In light of this need in the field, we strive to provide a context for this conversation as well as to foster critical thinking about Southeast Asia as a region.
Chair | Dates | ||
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Etin Anwar, Hobart and William Smith Colleges | anwar@hws.edu | - | View |
David Thang Moe | davidmoe83@gmail.com | - | View |