Call for Papers: Twenty-First-Century #Religion and #Culture in Youth #Literature (A Special Issue of The Lion and the Unicorn)

 From its earliest moments in medieval Britain and colonial America, Anglophone children’s literature was built on a foundation of religion. Even when not positioned as explicitly religious, the dominant British and colonial religion of Christianity infused children’s books with church-based morals, and references to Christmas and Jesus were taken for granted. Since then, religion has continued to be an important aspect of children’s literature, but the relationships between religion, culture, children’s literature, education, and libraries have changed several times. Now, in the twenty-first century, Anglophone children’s literature is often more conscious of religious and international diversity, having been influenced by movements like We Need Diverse Books and grassroots organizations serving religious and cultural minorities. At the same time, increasing social and political polarization affects the production of children’s literature, especially when controversial topics are so often tied to religious ideologies. Recent developments like new manifestations of religious nationalism, the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia, the splintering of the Methodist church, Pope Francis’ decision to allow Catholic clergy to bless same-sex relationships, the growing rate of young adults leaving religious communities, and differentiation within a variety of indigenous and diasporic religions make the time ripe for reconsideration of academic discussions about the role of religion and belief in children’s literature.

This special issue aims to revive and expand long-standing conversations about the roots and continued presence of religion in children’s literature, beyond consideration of early Christian influences. For example, children’s literature has been shaped by many developments including:

• fundamental changes in religious institutions; 
• cross-cultural influences within and between religions; 
• secularization and resistance to secularization; 
• grappling with and/or reconciliation of creationism and evolution; 
• movements intersecting with religion (e.g., ongoing civil rights struggles, feminism, LGBTQ+ advocacy, abortion access, environmental activism, decolonial movements, Black Lives Matter). 

With an eye towards interfaith dialogue and inclusion, we will feature a variety of perspectives on religion and culture in children’s and young adult literature. 

We invite submissions of proposals for this special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn to be published in Spring 2026. Please submit abstracts of 400-500 words for full-length essays (8,000-10,000 words) addressing, challenging, and/or developing ideas about the current state of religion and culture, broadly defined, in texts for children and young adults in a variety of religious and cultural contexts. We especially encourage papers considering non-Western and non-Abrahamic religious traditions, papers engaging with intersectionality, and papers considering old ideas in a new light.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Does religion still matter in twenty-first-century youth literature? 
• How does the post-secular and/or post-humanist age affect religious content in youth literature, and vice versa?
• How does the current state of religion in children’s literature and the relationship between religious cultures and children’s literature fit within the longer history of children’s publishing?
• What is the legacy of canonical authors or enduring representations of religious practice in children’s literature? 
• What has happened to the “Christmas chapter,” especially in series fiction? What role have those episodes, so long a staple of Anglophone children’s texts, played in shaping youth literature, national religious consciousness, politics, etc.?
• What does children’s literature still lack in the realm of religion and culture? Why are those elements important, and what prevents them from being represented?
• How are the many voices within individual religious or cultural communities represented? What are some of the internal debates, and how do they affect either niche or mainstream publishing?
• Are there significant differences in religious representations between books published for a mainstream audience and ones published for an internal religious or cultural community? Between books distributed in a single country versus books distributed globally?
• How does the religious or cultural affiliation of the perceived or intended audience affect the narratives of children’s texts? 
• What are the functions of youth libraries in religious cultural centers like mosques, synagogues, churches, or temples? What kinds of book-centered programming happens in these centers, and what role do they play in the representation of religion and culture in children’s literature?
• How do public libraries and/or public schools use materials with overt or subtle religious messaging? What kinds of book-centered religious programming do public libraries and/or public schools plan? How does this vary based on community demographics? 
• How do local or national standards of education in subjects like “world religions” influence which books make their way into the curriculum? How are these books utilized in lesson plans?
• At a time when librarianship, children’s literature scholarship, and publishing have committed to diversifying representation, what role does the age-old question of quality in children’s texts play in various contexts including religious communities, professional educators, scholars, etc.?
• How does religious content in youth literature shape the cultural consciousness of youth in all religious traditions (including none), of the publishing industry, and/or of professional organizations? 
• What role do children’s editions of sacred texts and/or study guides play in the broader market of youth literature?
• Is there a significant difference between religion as represented in fantasy and religion as presented in contemporary or historical realism? What are the effects of those differences on readers?
• Do books about contemporary youth and religion differ in any significant ways from books drawing on religious pasts or legends? 
• Does age matter? How do picture books, early readers, middle grade books, and/or young adult books differ in their engagement with or representation of religious and cultural content?
• How does youth literature with religious content address or engage with often-controversial themes like social justice, the environment, etc.? How does a religious lens influence the messaging around these topics? What are the differences between various religions’ and denominations’ approaches to these topics?
• How does religion function in any or all aspects of youth literature and youth media more broadly?

Deadline for submissions of proposals: July 15, 2024

Submit via Google Form: https://forms.gle/tC8g7MYpLAxF6dcu8

For any questions, contact Sara Schwebel (sls09@illinois.edu), Suzan Alteri (salteri@illinois.edu), or Dainy Bernstein (dainyb@illinois.edu).

Contact Information

Sara Schwebel, Suzan Alteri, Dainy Bernstein

Contact Email

sls09@illinois.edu

URL

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_VikD2T6mhwLfCA8ai83I-hg9aeWUHft/view?usp=shar…

Attachments

CFP: Twenty-First Century Religion and Culture in Youth Literature

Call for Book Series Announcement - Afrasia: Contours, Crossings, Connections -University of Pittsburgh Press

 The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the launch of Afrasia: Contours, Crossings, Connections (ACCC), a new scholarly book series that will examine how African and Asian peoples have encountered each other across diverse geographical and cultural contexts, in the past and present, with a focus on the frictions and solidarities of these encounters as catalyzed by contemporary trends in global migration, movement, and interrelation.

ACCC takes Afrasia as the conceptual and contingent space—historical and contemporary; sociocultural, political economic, and ideological; interpersonal, collective, and mass-mediated, among others—through which African and Asian peoples, as well as peoples of African and Asian descent, have engaged each other on and between their respective continents, across and through oceanic regions, and around the world. The series aims to establish a framework through which to understand the various interactions and enmeshments that took and take place between and across African and Asian actors—interactions that are neither stable nor unchanging but rather defined by their complexity, richness, mutability, and depth.

Welcoming interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the myriad dimensions of these exchanges, the series traces the contours of Afrasia to encompass West, Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia; Sub-Saharan and North Africa; and diasporic zones worldwide, including the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

ACCC will be edited by Marvin D. Sterling, associate professor of cultural anthropology, and Pedro Machado, associate professor of history, both of Indiana University Bloomington. An international editorial board of distinguished academics will advise the editors and the Press on series matters.

“The complex, myriad, and increasingly deep entanglements of Africans and Asians—and people of African and Asian descent—have chartered broad and wide-ranging trajectories whose contours and dynamics have shaped the currents of the global past and are defining the contemporary world,” states Machado. “Interest in exploring these enmeshments has been growing in recent years and this series will provide an urgently needed venue to showcase scholarship in this field.”

“In addition to the international political, economic, and similar terms in which the interactions between African and Asian peoples have been understood, we are invested in what have been under-explored perspectives that are socioculturally attentive, ethnographically attuned, and humanistic in their framings of the global histories, as well as the present and emergent futures, of these interactions,” offers Sterling. “In this way, the series is both forward looking, and decades overdue.”

The series invites proposals for monographs and edited volumes from new and experienced scholars. Inquiries should be directed to William Masami Hammell, senior acquisitions editor: whammell@upress.pitt.edu. Submission information is available on the Book Submissions page. Once up and running, the series aims to publish 2-3 books each year.

Contact Email

whammell@upress.pitt.edu

URL

https://upittpress.org/series/afrasia-contours-crossings-connections/

CFP: International Conference on The Ends and Means of Liberal Education -- Extended Call for Papers -May- 2024

 he Ends and Means of Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century

May 2nd to 4th 2024

Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada

The powerful, transformative forces reshaping contemporary societies both challenge liberal education and provide it with new opportunities. The Ends and Means of Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century conference will explore the relevance and possibilities of undergraduate liberal education given the advent of artificial intelligence, digital media, political polarisation, cultural fragmentation, and growing economic and social instability.

Proposals are invited for papers on any aspect of the nature and provision of liberal education. Broad theoretical reflections, particular case studies, and reasoned, evidenced polemical presentations are all welcomed. The conference will be a forum for voices from disciplines across the humanities, natural and social sciences, and professions.

The conference keynote speaker will be Professor Henry Giroux, Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest​ at Macmaster University and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.  Professor Giroux is a leading exponent of critical pedagogy and author of more than 70 books including the influential University in Chains (2007), Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education (2014, 2020), and Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (2022).

For the full call for papers, please see: https://bit.ly/LibEd2024

Proposal Abstracts due: 15th March 2024 (extended)

Contact: David Clemis: liberal.education@mtroyal.ca

Contact Information

David Clemis, Director of Liberal Education, Mount Royal University

Contact Email

liberal.education@mtroyal.ca

URL

https://bit.ly/LibEd2024

CFP: New Volume --The Practice of Pilgrimage in a Global Early Modern Context

 We are seeking contributions to a volume exploring pilgrimage in a global context from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. This volume is under consideration for publication in the book series Reflections on Early Modernity / Réflexions sur la première modernité published by the journal Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme. Whether discussing visitations of local shrines or the great trans-regional events like the Hajj and pilgrimages to faraway lands, the rite of pilgrimage kept believers on the move, making pilgrims one of the most visible manifestations of mobility and religious devotion. At the same time, they served as central agents in reconstituting religious themes and notions throughout the early modern period.  Pilgrimage was an intensely social and cultural event, as groups of various travelers encountered each other, as well as other cultures, and experienced new modes of living and other ways of worshiping. As a popular rite, it was also an economic driver of local economies, providing services and goods for travelers, which served the interests of powerful authorities. After 1450, the expansion of maritime trading routes, wars, religious change and a sharp rise and legitimization of curiosity, were among the many forces that worked the extend the global reach of many faiths. These forces also reshaped the practice of pilgrimage in the process. 

It is in this context of an increasingly interconnected and changing early modern world that this volume will offer a forum for an investigation of early modern pilgrimage in a comparative context. We are seeking contributors working from the perspective of diverse disciplines (e. art history, history, literature, anthropology), religious traditions (ie. Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity) and regional contexts who could engage with one or more of the following themes: 

 

Pilgrimage and Identity

Journeys of pilgrimage created a space where encounters took place among pilgrims themselves, especially those who traveled in a group; between pilgrims and people or communities they met on their way, especially the communities who lived next to the holy places - the destination of the journey; an encounter with the holy sites; as well as with the pilgrim's own self. These encounters created many opportunities for the re-examination of the pilgrims' boundaries of identity - religious and cultural - as they were used to mark them in their countries of origin. What was the contribution of these encounters to shaping a pilgrim's religious identity? Or the identity of a pilgrim's community of origin?  Or alternatively: How the pilgrim's boundaries of identity are reflected in his description of the "other communities", of the holy sites, of the journey? 

These are only a few possible questions to be discussed.

 

 

Pilgrimage and the Construction of Power

Just as the purposes and motives of pilgrimage vary, so do the relationships between pilgrims and political rulers. Many institutions connected with sacred travel have been controlled or sponsored by such authorities, who could collect contributions from pilgrims visiting the shrines within their lands while promoting their reputations as devout leaders. How did these institutions used pilgrimage to build their power? How did it work when rulers and pilgrims were not of the same religion or culture? How did it work when the holy site was worshiped by more than one religion?

Pilgrimages have also prompted behaviors that have proved deeply threatening to political and religious authorities. How did the authorities react to the pilgrims' search for divine favor? How did they react to their temporary release from everyday life, and the volatile potential of a mass movement of people?

 

The Practice of Pilgrimage (ie. liturgy, relics, markets, hospices)

Although pilgrimage is considered to be a journey taken for spiritual reasons and it usually entails some separation from the everyday world of home, it creates a physical world of its own, not to mention pilgrimage sites tend to have a material focus. Pilgrimage involves, first and foremost, a movement across physical and cultural landscapes, that raises the questions of: routs, vehicles, inns, money-changers, translators, or guides. What are the souvenirs, or relics, that were being transported home? Their importance for the pilgrim's community? What were the cultural performances, or rituals, whether at the holy sites or in social encounters, that pilgrims were involved with?   

 

Shrines and their Replicas 

The phenomenon of establishing or creating equivalents to sacred sites – and occasionally, to an entire city (Jerusalem, Rome), is known in more than a few contexts. It can be a second burial site of a holy person, a sacred tradition being celebrated in more than one site, etc. Documenting the origin and the replicas of a holy site is one goal, yet another will be to discuss what makes a site an original? And what makes it a replica? What were the historical contexts, and purpose for their creation? And how did they affect pilgrimage routes and practices? 

 

 

Pilgrimage Testimonies: Written and Visual/Pictoral 

The testimonies (written, visual, pictoral, other) created by pilgrims testifies to the various ways in which the physical movement of pilgrims between places and cultures shaped the intellectual and material cultures of communities in both the pilgrims' places of origin and the places they visited. These testimonies also interacted with, and became vessels of, myriad intellectual and other traditions (scientific, theological, literary, other), traditions that during the early modern period were shifting in the ways that also came to reshape common perceptions of the world in which pilgrims lived including conceptions of the sacred.

 

Instructions for the Proposals 

Each chapter should address some of the questions raised in at least one of the emphases outlined above. The maximum word length for each article is 10,000 words, including all notes and images. To submit a proposal for an article, please send an abstract in either English or French of no more than 600 words and a brief c.v. to Dr. Orit Ramon oritra@openu.ac.il no later than March 31, 2024. You will hear by April 1, 2024 if your proposal to contribute a chapter to the volume has been accepted. We will accept proposals from authors at any stage from advanced graduate students to senior scholars.

 

For questions, please feel free to send an email to any of the editors:

Dr. Orit Ramon, Dept of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Open University of Israel (oritra@openu.ac.il )

Dr. Megan Armstrong, Dept McMaster University, Canada (marmstr@mcmaster.ca )

Dr. Yamit Rachman-Schirre, Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (yamit.rachman@mail.huji.ac.il )

 

Contact Information

 

Dr. Orit Ramon, Dept of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Open University of Israel (oritra@openu.ac.il )

Dr. Megan Armstrong, Dept McMaster University, Canada (marmstr@mcmaster.ca )

Dr. Yamit Rachman-Schirre, Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (yamit.rachman@mail.huji.ac.il )

Contact Email

marmstr@mcmaster.ca

Attachments

CFP for New Publication, Pilgrimage in a Global Early Modern Context

Call for Papers/Panels: Chautari Annual Conference –Kathmandu, Nepal on November 27−29, 2024

 Call for Papers/Panels

Chautari Annual Conference – 2024

Martin Chautari (MC) is organizing the Chautari Annual Conference in Kathmandu, Nepal on November 27−29, 2024. The aim of this conference is to promote research culture in the humanities and social sciences in Nepal. MC invites submission of abstracts of research papers or abstracts of the theme-based panels from eligible researchers or institutions who will have completed their research by the abstract submission deadline.

Preferences

• The theme of the research should be related to Nepal; comparative work is also welcome provided that Nepal-related content is substantial.
• Young/women researchers are highly encouraged to submit the abstracts.

Abstract guidelines

• Abstracts can be in English or Nepali and should be of 500 words.
• The title of the proposed paper, a short description of the research base, and the paper’s main arguments/findings must be clearly stated.
• Abstracts for panels should consist of its title and a brief description, and the abstract of each paper in the panel should also be included.
• A one-page CV of the authors including their current contact details should be attached.
   

Notifications

• The receipt of abstract submission will be acknowledged by e-mail.
• All participants, including paper presenters and panelists, are required to register to attend the conference (Registration fee NRs. 700 per person).
• Participants are expected to make their own arrangements for travel and accommodation.
   

Important dates
Call for abstracts: January 18, 2024
Abstract submission deadline: June 10, 2024
Announcement of accepted abstracts: July 25, 2024
Deadline for the submission of full papers (max 5,000 words): October 31, 2024
Announcement of accepted papers: November 10, 2024
Conference days: November 27−29, 2024
 

 

Contact Information

Abstracts and queries should be sent to
conference@martinchautari.org.np and mcannualconf@gmail.com

Further information can be obtained from:
Conference Organizing Committee
Martin Chautari
27 Jeetjung Marg, Thapathali, Kathmandu, Nepal
Phone: (+977 1) 5338050/4102027/4102243

Contact Email

conference@martinchautari.org.np

URL

https://martinchautari.org.np/events/call-for-papers-panels-chautari-annual-con…

Call For Applications: Funded Ambedkar Summer School 2024-Indian Institute of Dalit Studies- May 19-24, 2024

Ambedkar Summer School, a week-long residential programme, organised by IIDS and RLS, aims to develop the capacity of youths from marginalised social groups by strengthening the knowledge discourse and critical understanding of issues related to public policy in practice through reading/writing, dialogue, debates, discussions and critical questioning using lived experiences.

Young research scholars and activists who are working on inter-group inequality, marginalization and social exclusion in public policy in India can apply.

The applicants need to send extended abstract (around 1000 words) along with annotated bibliography on the Public Policy and Marginalized Social Groups. 

The applicants also need to send their detailed CV along with the application.

The organisers will bear the cost of travel (train AC three tier), boarding and lodging during the course of the programme.

Applications should be sent by email to the programme convener  at 

ambedkarschooliidsrls@gmail.com.

Last date of application: March 25, 2024

Notification to the selected participants: April 5, 2024

Ambedkar Summer School 2024: May 19-24, 2024

For  more details: https://dalitstudies.org.in/ambedkar-summer-school/

or 

https://www.facebook.com/rosaluxsouthasia

CFP International Conference “Literary Recycling for Postdigital Readers.” A Digital Epistemology for the Recycling of Literatures?: Digital Literary Studies under Debate -Sep 26 - 27, 2024

Now that we live immersed in the postdigital era without hardly noticing it and that any given cultural object seems susceptible to be recycled by a digital technology available to anyone, it is time to ask ourselves about the underlying conceptual and methodological models that these technologies impose.

What kind of cultural recycling (of reading, of literatures, of literary histories) are the so-called Digital Humanities proposing? We observe that the construction of digitised corpora, the essentially quantitative and probabilistic methods, and the capacity of machines to quantify data propose a model of objectivity, a single epistemology that seems to clash with plural hermeneutics.

If these methods make it possible to look at the past through new lenses, how can we do so without forgetting the interstices and ambiguities that they leave out?  Can phenomena of the past, such as the transcultural or transtemporal interweavings and the mediality of other eras (in contrast to the present one) be helpful to understand more precisely the mediatisation and recycling of literature today? Particularly, those mediations and recycling carried out by Digital Humanities’ methods?

It is not a new model, it is an old one: we only have to take a look at its history (its promises can already be found in nineteenth-century positivism) or at the institutionalisation of Digital Humanities as a disciplinary field, which tends to be conservative in its principles and hierarchies. Nevertheless, this model is considered innovative in terms of its creation, modification, and introduction of a socio-cultural use in literary studies. This is indeed why we must question the epistemological bias of this model. In culture, in literatures, biases are observable. We need to critically question the specific characteristics of digital methodologies in the field of literary studies and their underlying conceptualisations and epistemologies, since they can guide future approaches, as well as point to its limitations and blind spots: we need Critical Digital Humanities.

Contributions may focus on one of the following aspects:

- Theories and methods of literary analysis in Digital Humanities: limitations and how to overcome them.

- Methods and applications of the digital analysis of literary corpora and texts as forms of cultural recycling: underlying conceptualisations.

- Analysis of mixed methods that blend previous literary-theoretical traditions and procedures that are specific to the Digital Humanities: epistemological foundations.

- Analysis of processes of cultural and transtemporal interweaving in literatures using digital methodologies: possibilities and limitations.

- Macro-recycling of literary histories: new focuses, blind spots.

The languages of the conference will be Spanish, English and German. Guest lectures will be translated into Spanish.

Key speakers: Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) and Rabea Kleymann (Technische Universität Chemnitz)

Interested applicants can send their proposals including name, institution, email address, title of the proposal, keywords and an abstract of at least 250 words to reclit-ji@ucm.es by March 15, 2024. The committee's decision on the acceptance of the proposals will be notified within two months.

A monographic publication will be released with the contributions selected by the scientific committee.

Faculty of Philology, Complutense University of Madrid, September 26 and 27, 2024

Organised by LEETHI Group

Coordinators: Miriam Llamas, Amelia Sanz, Secretary: Irene Pérez

Scientific Committee: Tina Escaja (The University of Vermont), Alckmar Luiz dos Santos (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina), Teresa Numerico (Università degli studi Roma Tre), Manuel Portela (University of Coimbra), Johanna Vollmeyer (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Web of the event: https://www.ucm.es/leethi/literary-recycling-for-postdigital-readers