We are pleased to announce the call for papers for our 2023 annual conference, held in collaboration with the British Association for the Study of Religions.
CenSAMM-BASR Annual Conference 2023
Clare College, Cambridge
11 – 13 September 2023
“Environmental Endings and Religious Futures”
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Catherine Wessinger, Professor of the History of Religions, Loyola University New Orleans.
Dr. Katherine Swancutt, Reader in Social Anthropology, King’s College London.
Call for Papers:
Religions have long offered frameworks of meaning for concepts of world ending. Amid the contemporary social and political importance of climate change and fears about environmental degradation, ideas of world ending and widespread cataclysm have become pressing in both religious and secular contexts. Equally, as apocalyptic discourses proliferate, so too do human imaginations of the future, with optimistic and pessimistic narratives of the post-apocalyptic world jostling for attention. Reflecting on these overlapping strands, the theme of this year’s annual conference is “Environmental Endings and Religious Futures.”
Held in collaboration with the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM), BASR 2023 invites submissions reflecting on how religion interacts with narratives of environmental decline, catastrophe, hope, and renewal. We also invite submissions reflecting on the connections and tensions between religious practice, environmental activism, and climate justice (as well as passivity and injustice). We also welcome critical and methodological studies of the ways Religious Studies scholars might seek to understand and evaluate the complex ways that religious beliefs and practices interact with contemporary concerns about imminent environmental cataclysm.
Deadline for all proposals: 19th May 2023
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
Method and theory in the study of contemporary apocalyptic discourse
Ethnography as an approach to environmental movements and religious movements
Religious themes in the politics of environmentalism
Quietism and passivism in the face of the Apocalypse
Rethinking ritual in the context of climate change
Religion, climate crisis, and hope: human imaginations of good and bad endings
Religion, environment, and gender
A human-led apocalypse? Religion during the Anthropocene
Stewardship, extractivism, and the spirit of capitalism
Religion, environment, racism, and privilege
Religion, climate activism, and climate change denial
Environmental endings and indigenous religion
Lived religion in a dying environment
Environmental healing and alternative religious futures
Religion and environmental policy
Understanding “renewal”: millennial, environmental, technological
Responses to the climate crisis within New Religious Movements
Religion and climate injustice in the Global South
Individual Paper Proposals: please submit title and abstract of 200 words. All paper proposals should also include the name, title, affiliation (or most recent affiliation), and email address of the presenter. Individually submitted papers will be grouped into 90 minute thematic panels comprising of three papers (with each speaker given 20 minutes to present plus 10 minutes for questions).
Full Panel Proposals: please submit abstracts of 200 words for panel proposals. All panel proposals should also include the name, title, affiliation (or most recent affiliation), and email address of each presenter plus the chair and discussant (if applicable) plus abstracts for each of the individual papers on the panel. Full panel proposals will follow the same 90 minute format outlined above.
Roundtable Proposals: please submit a title and abstract of 400 words describing the theme to be discussed. All roundtable proposals should also include the name, title, affiliation (or most recent affiliation), and email address of each contributor. Roundtables will last 90 minutes and should include time for discussion from the floor.
Other Formats: We welcome other presentation formats. Please submit such proposals to the email address below, outlining all the necessary details.
All Proposals: please submit to BASRconference2023@gmail.com by 19th May 2023.
Confirmation of acceptance by 16th June 2023.
