[Grad_history_students] FW: CFP, Columbia Religion Graduate Student Conference: "Pray, Kill, Eat"

[Sylvester, Roshanna]

Historians,

Some of you may be interested in the Call for Papers (CFP) for an upcoming graduate student conference at Columbia University in New York.

Best regards,
Dr. S

Roshanna P. Sylvester, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor and
 Graduate Program Director
Department of History 
DePaul University  
rsylvest at depaul.edu
773-325-7825 (phone)




-----Original Message-----
From: Columbia University Religion Graduate Students Association [mailto:columbiareligion at gmail.com]
Sent: Mon 12/12/2011 10:18 AM
To: columbiareligion at gmail.com
Subject: CFP, Columbia Religion Graduate Student Conference: "Pray, Kill, Eat"
 
Hello,

We kindly request that you please distribute this to your respective
Departments and listserves.

Many thanks,

Udi Halperin and Hamsa Stainton
Conference Coordinators
Religion Graduate Students' Association
Columbia University


Call for Papers

The Religion Graduate Students' Association of Columbia University is now
accepting paper proposals for its Eighth Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate
Student Conference:

Pray, Kill, Eat: Relating to Animals across Religious Traditions

Friday, April 20, 2012, 9 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Columbia University, New York, NY

The keynote speakers for the conference are:

Professor Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor
of the History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School

Professor Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical
Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School.


Humans have always had complex and intimate relationships with animals.
Animals have been feared, revered, hunted, sacrificed, eaten, utilized,
domesticated, and worshipped for thousands of years. Religious traditions
have been instrumental in both reflecting and constructing humans' notions
of animals and have integrated such notions into comprehensive mythical,
symbolic, and ritual frameworks of meaning and action. In recent decades,
however, many earlier forms of such relationships have been radically
transformed in the face of rapid development.  At the same time scholars
like Kimberley Patton and Wendy Doniger have led efforts to rethink animals
and religion from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. This
conference, therefore, engages both the shifting complexity of the modern
world and a growing body of scholarship in religious studies. We seek
papers that explore animals as both religious objects and subjects, and
probe the myriad ways in which religions reflect, shape, and re-shape the
relationship between humans and animals.

We welcome papers that address contemporary as well as historical
articulations of this topic, drawing on diverse methodologies and sources.
 Papers may be on any topic related to animals and religion.  Suggested
themes include:

- Sacrifice
- The use of animals (or animal parts) in festivals, rituals and other
religious contexts
- The deification and demonization of animals
- Religious dietary practices (e.g. prescriptions and proscriptions
regarding animals)
- Transgressive practices involving animals
- Animals as the paradigmatic Other
- Blurred categories: hybrids, half-animals, shape-shifting, etc.
- Possession of/by animals
- Animals in religious narratives
- Animal symbolism
- Religion and animals in the 21st century (urbanization, technology,
industrialization of animal husbandry)
- Animal rights and the treatment of animals
- Religion, animals, and political discourse
- Evolution and creationism
- Reincarnation

Please submit paper titles and abstracts (300 words or less) to
columbiareligion at gmail.com.
Please include name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and a
contact email address.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:  January 27, 2012
All proposals will receive a response by mid-February, 2012

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