Call for Sessions and Papers

Date: August 8-11, 2018

Venue: University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Deadline for Panel and Paper proposals: December 4, 2017

The Center for Media, Religion and Culture and the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder will host the 11^th biennial conference of the International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture (ISMRC), which will explore the relationship between media, religion and public scholarship.

This conference will bring together international scholars from various disciplines including media studies, journalism, politics, religious studies, the anthropology and sociology of religion, history, the study of literature and public policy. The conference, since its first meeting in 1996, has become the leading international gathering for the discussion of research in religion, media and culture. We invite proposals for panels, workshops and/or roundtable sessions as well as for individual papers. The Call for Papers can be found here.

Following the success of the first doctoral student pre-conference at the 2016 ISMRC conference in Seoul, we will also host a workshop for PhD students on Tuesday, August 7. Participants register for this during conference registration. Details about this workshop, along with the Call for Papers, can be found here.

Keynote Speakers

• Anthea Butler, University of Pennsylvania
• Merlyna Lim, Carleton University
• John Durham PetersJohn Durham Peters, Yale University

Call for Papers

The new visibility of religion in public life is a theme of growing relevance in academic research as well as in public policy making. This increasingly visible trend emphasizes the societal impact of research and invites scholars of media and religion to actively take part in public debate and negotiation over the meaning and significance of religion in contemporary society. Consequently, new possibilities for dialogue with academia, media and society emerge and may result in better understandings of the role of religion in present public life.

However, new challenges also appear. In some societies scholars face serious risks if and when they voice views that contradict dominant political, ideological and/or religious interests in those societies. Hence, it is equally important to recognize those mechanisms of explicit and implicit silencing that prevent researchers from taking on roles as public scholars in society.

In addition, the present digital age provides new communicative opportunities to contribute to the public debate beyond local and national contexts. Global digitalization also challenges academic expression and related free speech as messages travel across a variety of media platforms and interpretive communities.

All of these perspectives call for the need to re-think the relationship between media, religion and public scholarship. We need a framework that better acknowledges the cultural, historical and societal contexts in which research occurs and may have influence.

The conference will explore the theme of public scholarship in the study of media and religion from a variety of different perspectives. Some of the questions that may be addressed in panel, workshop/roundtable and paper proposals include:

• Religion and mediatized public life
• Media, ethics and public scholarship
• Public scholarship, gender/race and religion
• Religion, media and politics/public policy
• Media, religion, and authority
• Religious conflict, media representation and public opinion/public policy
• Journalism and public religion
• Free speech, religion and public scholarship
• Hate speech, religion and public scholarship
• Religious audiences and public scholarship
• Public religiosity: spirituality in popular culture
• Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of religion, media and public scholarship
• Public theology and media
• Digital religion, global and transnational trends

More information at: Conference Website