Call for Papers: Religion, Violence, and Peace Conference
The Human Rights and Global Justice Research Group at Wake Forest University
invites paper proposals for a conference on the broad topic of
Religion, Violence, and Peace
9-11 April 2015 – (Winston-Salem, North Carolina).
Deadline proposals: December 15, 2014
Our chief aim is to bring together multi-disciplinary scholars working on the topic of religion, violence, and peacemaking from historical as well as contemporary perspectives. In particular, we are interested in papers that probe the complex patterns of interaction between religious commitments and violence in a variety of cultural and regional contexts, the ways in which violence is sacralized, and the use of religious beliefs and practices to justify, mitigate or redirect violence in less destructive channels.
Through keynote presentations and group discussion after each speaker, this conference will provide opportunities to deepen our understanding of the patterns of religious violence and the nature and scope of our moral responses to them.
Synthesis and dialogue will be facilitated by asking presenters from one day to serve as respondents on the other day and keynote speakers whose research explicitly addresses the intersections between religion and violence. We plan to publish the best papers from the conference.
Among the topics papers might address are the following:
– The roots of different types of violence in their specific contexts
– The use of religious texts as legitimation of violence; competing interpretations of religious texts to incite or to oppose violence.
– Religious violence perpetrated by the State.
– Assessments of religious ethical approaches to war and peacemaking;
– Religious violence as a tool of state domestic and/or foreign policy
– Models of religious responses to violence;
– Religious strategies of conflict resolution and peacemaking initiatives
– Non-Muslim minorities in religiously pluralistic context.
– Gendered strategies to promote or counter violence.
– The role of violence in sustaining cultures of faith, economy, and collective and personal identity
– Political and economic factors that influence certain forms of violence.
– The links between religion, violence and economic conditions.
– The impact of education and the role of children.
– Religious justification of the use of violence to promote religious rights and human rights.
Submission Details:
Please send abstracts of approximately 500 – 800 words to both:
Simeon Ilesanmi (ilesanmi@wfu.edu) and Nelly van Doorn-Harder
(vandoopa@wfu.edu). Deadline: December 15, 2014.
An affiliate of the WFU Humanities Institute, the Human Rights and Global Justice Research Group is an incubator and a hub for faculty research, programs, and events devoted to issues of human rights and global justice.
