The Religious Studies Graduate Organization in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte is proud to announce its 5th annual graduate student conference on Friday, April 29, 2022 virtually. The theme for this year’s conference is Religion & Futurity: Elsewhere, Elsewhen, and Beyond. Within this theme, we begin to ask:
How has the field of Religious Studies changed, shifted, and been reconceptualized? What is “religion,” and how have scholars, artists, and communities shifted their thinkings and representations about religion and religious activities, behaviors, identities, spaces, and temporalities? And as such, what are alternative and possibly disruptive ways of thinking about, through, and between interdisciplinary themes related to religion? We invite exciting, engaging, and creative multidisciplinary works from graduate and undergraduate students that explore themes, such as:
• Queerness and its spaces and temporalities in relation to, within, and outside of religion • Religion as performance and performance as religion
• Local, global, transnational, and/or neoliberal religious spaces, communities, and geographies
• Religion and/within digital spaces
• Race and religion
• Movement politics, demonstrations, activism as religion
• Trans, gender, and sexuality identity politics in religious worlds
• Religion, psychedelics, and imagined otherwise
• Ethnography and religion
• Drag religion, art and religion, dance and religion
• ...and more!
This virtual graduate conference aims to bring together students-scholars-artists who explore the interstices of religion through textual, visual, and creative modes.
Please email all abstracts (about 250 words) to religiousstudies@uncc.edu by Monday, January 31, 2022. Those who would like to present non-textual work must also submit an abstract (about 250 words) describing the submission and how it relates to religion broadly. Submitters will be notified of approval or denial for participation via email by Monday, February 14, 2022 along with rules for non-textual participants. A zoom link will be sent out a week before the conference date. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please email David Flaherty at dflaher1@uncc.edu.