Call for Papers

Date: April 23-25, 2020

Venue: Olomouc, Czech Republic

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15, 2019

The aim of this conference is to encourage scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Western scholarship, to reflect on the variety of such peripheries – in particular, peripheries in/of religions as well as in the study of religion; for instance, various forms of heresy, apostasy and blasphemy, ways and forms of religious and social exclusion, and types of power and powerlessness within religious traditions. At the same time, it is considered important to draw attention to the peripheral areas of religious studies, the reasons for the marginalization of certain scholars, and the exclusion of some approaches, methods and concepts. If religious studies is to be a discipline creating its own peripheries, it is undoubtedly important to take them into account.

We want to address these issues in the forthcoming international conference and encourage scholars from various parts of Europe and elsewhere to share their theoretical and empirical insights about religious diversification and varieties of approaches to it.

The conference topics include but are not limited to:

•  Non-believers and atheists in religious societies
•  Religious people as a minority
•  Dominant and peripheral discourses on religion
•  Exposing the explicit and implicit in religions
•  Transformations of the New Religious Movements: from the periphery to the mainstream or disappearance
•  Peripheral religious practices in history and modern times: magic, divination and ritual healing
•  Religious diversification and social exclusion
•  Theories and methods on the peripheries: marginal approaches in the study of religion

Important dates:

– Submission of abstracts: by December 15th 2019
– Submission of session/panel proposals: by December 15th 2019
– Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15 January 2020
– Notification of acceptance of session/panel proposals: 15 January 2020
– Opening of registration: 15 January 2020
– Final date for registration: 15 February 2020
– Final program: 15 March 2020

Conference Website: https://isorecea2020.upol.cz/