Publicly Engaged Scholarship in the Study of Religion Seminar
The inaugural virtual session of the Publicly Engaged Scholarship in the Study of Religion seminar invites proposals that examine influential social movements, texts, or historical figures, that challenge and/or illustrate best practices in publicly engaged teaching and research.
We invite proposals for short presentations that will serve as launching points for a broader group discussion. This inaugural session will have participants share the social movement, text, or figure who has been integral in shaping their own engaged approach to research and/or pedagogy. Proposals should briefly describe the movement/text/figure with some justification for why this example is important for others interested in engaged research and pedagogy to understand. We especially invite examples that speak directly to the conference theme of violence, nonviolence and the margins.
We welcome proposals from scholars working in historical and contemporary perspectives across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Similarly, we welcome scholars doing archival research, work on digital communities, or auto-ethnography that reflect on the needs of the moment, are attuned toward public-facing outcomes or implications, and incorporate community concerns into their research questions and processes.
This seminar creates a multi-disciplinary space to explore the intersections between publicly engaged research, collective knowledge production, and relations of power in the study of religion. As part of broader conversations about the relationships between social change and the public humanities, the seminar is organized around diverse ideas of “the public” and interrogates the forces of racialized and colonial power that shape our fields. Whereas disciplinary training often privileges postures of political neutrality, we orient conversations around what it means to do scholarship that has political stakes, who we do that work with, and how we can strengthen that work. The seminar aims to generate a space for those with broad interests in the theoretical, methodological, and historical foundations of knowledge production in the study of religion and its political and public impacts. The seminar provides a nexus for collective consideration of processes of social change and social justice as they relate to theories of religion. The space will also interest those with practical interests in how to establish and sustain community and/or politically-engaged research and teaching programs within and beyond the academy.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucas Johnston | johnstlf@wfu.edu | - | View |
| Rebecca Bartel | rbartel@sdsu.edu | - | View |