[Discussion] CFP-Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology,Transformations of Modernity [K.Reinhart]]

[Gonul Pultar]

Call for Papers:  "Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology, and
Transformations of Modernity," Humanities Institute, Dartmouth College
 
> The Humanities Institute invites proposals for papers to be presented at a
> conference scheduled for December 1, 2 , 3, 2002.  This upcoming Institute
> will examine the concept of "conversion" in a broad sense as it operated
> during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Ottoman domain, Indian Islamdom,
> and
> the Sino-Japanese worlds.
> 
> While the concept of "conversion"has strong religious connotations, many
> works
> on religious conversion recognize that often not just the converted, but the
> converter as well is changed---a transformation that demonstrates the
> complex,
> sometimes contradictory outcomes of cultural and ideological adaptation.
> Conversion can take place in a number of modes: forcible and voluntary,
> collective and individual, or any combination of these.
> 
> Historical instances such as conversion to tennôsei ideology in Japan, or to
> "modern laicism" in Turkey suggest that conversion may be viewed
> constructively in larger terms as political and ideological processes:
> conversion as cultural appropriation---the adoption by subordinate groups of
> dominant discourses, customs, and institutional forms; conversion as the
> redefinition of spatial categories- East-West, rural-urban, empire-colony;
> or
> conversion as an reordering of social class and the blurring of ethnic and
> gender categories. The extensive literature on religious conversion will
> prove
> useful in analyzing these types of socio-cultural transformations. For a
> more
> complete description of the conference, go to the Institute's website:
> www.dartmouth.edu/~lhc/converting.html
> 
> Presenters will be provided room and a travel stipend. The goal of this
> conference is to produce an edited volume and presenters will be expected to
> make a draft of their paper available before the conference. Final drafts
> will
> be expected by June 1, 2003
> 
> Please send a one-page paper proposal/abstract either to:
> Leslie Center for the Humanities
> Dartmouth College
> Carpenter Hall
> Hanover, NH  03755
> or Humanities.Center@dartmouth.edu