CFP: Material Effects on Religion on Bodies

i'm a big ann pelligrini fan.



Religion Matters:
Material Effects of Religion on Bodies

Keynote Address by Professor Ann Pellegrini

The Religious Studies Roundtable at The Ohio State University is pleased to announce the first in what it hopes will become a series of Annual Graduate Student Conferences, to be held OCTOBER 4, 2008. The conference, "Religion Matters: Material Effects of Religion on Bodies," seeks to explore the effects of religion on the body, as well as collective bodies (like the nation), from a wide range of scholarly approaches.

The keynote address will be delivered by Ann Pellegrini, Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies at New York University. Professor Pellegrini's interests include religion, sex and the law; queer theory; trauma and the performance of witnessing; and religion and performance. Her books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race (1997); Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (2003), co-authored with Janet R. Jakobsen; and Secularisms (2008), co-edited with Janet R. Jakobsen. Professor Pellegrini's talk will address "queer structures of religious feeling."


A 19-year-old boy refuses a life saving transfusion. Monks resist government attempts to put down a diseased cow. A cancer patient finds healing in alternative forms of treatment. An abortion clinic is bombed. Each of these is an example of the tangible and material effects of religion on the body in daily life. This conference seeks to explore the actual, daily, lived presence of religion in the world, both past and present. We especially welcome submissions about topics that might not, at first glance, be considered religious. Submissions are not limited to scholarly, non-fiction pieces but may include fiction, performance pieces or any other
format that address the topic. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• the consequences of belief for the body: sexual, medical, political, legal, ethical, physiological, psychological, etc.
• disciplinary techniques of the body
• the effect of cultivation, meditation and practice on the body
• religious affects and intensities
• religious trauma
• religious and bio-politics in a time of war
• bodily modifications
• the relationship between corporeality and spirituality, religion, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity

In order to keep the conference unified while allowing for the greatest range of topics, focus should be on some material effect resulting from or explained at least in part by religion. Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to van-kley.2@osu.edu by JUNE 1, 2008. Submissions should be prepared for blind review. Proposals should not include any identifying
names. Contact information should only be in the body of the email and should include your name, email address, mailing address, institution and title of your paper. Please put the title of the conference 'Religion Matters' in the subject line of your emailed abstract. Any questions can be addressed to Bridget Buchholz (buchholz.21@osu.edu) or Rita Trimble (trimble.38@osu.edu).