[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Religion and Politics (3/15/06; journal issue)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Radical History Review invites submissions of abstracts for a
forthcoming thematic issue exploring the subject of religion and its
historical relations to politics, culture and society. We especially
encourage proposals for articles with interdisciplinary and
transnational perspectives.

While most historians of pre- and early-modern societies have long
accepted that religion and politics were inextricably intertwined, the
western liberal commitment to secular modernity has generally relocated
religion out of the public sphere and into the private, in order to
domesticate, tame, and depoliticize religious faith. Consequently, faith
and belief appeared inaccessible to systematic historical analysis. Yet,
this version of a secular modernity was a form of western,
post-Enlightenment myth-making. As Peter van der Veer has argued,
religion has constantly erupted into the public and was never fully
relegated to an a-political private sphere beyond the reach of
historical explanation. Global events¯the political mobilization of
religious fundamentalisms throughout the world; a U.S. foreign and
domestic policy driven by what Ron Suskind has called a "faith-based
presidency"; the changing religious demographics of a once predominately
Catholic Latin America; legal debates about the repatriation of
aboriginal spiritual artifacts; the rise of secularism in the Middle
East and in the Indian subcontinent and the subsequent revitalization
and reinvention of religious "tradition" in those regions¯all demand
that scholars now reconsider the political, social, and cultural history
of religions, past and present.

Religious belief systems, practices, and conflicts have actively
informed experiences of modernity in both the west and the non-west. A
critical perspective on the history of religion will attempt to
comprehend the violence engendered by religious differences, from
medieval Crusades to the religious hostilities that erupted during
Indian decolonization in 1947, to the contemporary antagonisms shaping
everyday life in Palestine and Israel.

The political vitality of religion has, of course, not only manifested
itself in destructive ways. A radical history must also account for the
ways that religious institutions, practices, discourses, and commitments
have provided sources for powerful critiques of modernity, the
nation-state, the market, slavery, European colonial rule, and racial
supremacy. How can scholars with a commitment to diversity,
inclusiveness, and progressive change make analytic sense of the complex
historical conditions, meanings, practices, and legacies of religion?
How might the study of the history of religion(s) across time and space
suggest ways to reconceptualize modernity and pre/postmodernity, and to
rethink received historical categories previously associated with the
development of secular modernity, such as the public sphere, the private
conscience, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and/or capitalism?

Radical History Review solicits article proposals from scholars across
the disciplines, in fields including history, anthropology, religious
studies, sociology, philosophy, political science, gender, and cultural
studies.  We encourage potential contributors to explore the following
issues, among other possibilities:

�	Religion and state violence
�	Religious identity within transnational migrations and diasporic
communities
�	The links between religion/secularism and political and/or social
radicalism
�	Gender, sexuality and religious belief
�	Religion and secularism within civil rights movements
�	Religious freedoms and human rights
�	Liberation theologies
�	Missionaries and imperialism
�	The politics of religious iconography
�	Faith-based organizing, charity and social welfare
�	The commodification of religion
�	Tolerance/intolerance
�	"Religion" as a category of analysis in history, anthropology, sociology

We also encourage submissions from scholars who teach religious history,
for our special section, Teaching Radical History. In TRH pieces,
scholars discuss their methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical
frameworks, along with course syllabi and reflections on the class
experience.

Procedures for submission of proposals and articles:

By March 15, 2006, please submit a 1-2 page abstract summarizing your
article to rhr@igc.org. By April 1, 2006 authors will be notified
whether they should submit their article in full. The due date for
solicited, complete articles is May 1, 2006. All articles will then be
put through the peer review process. Articles selected for publication
after the peer review process will appear in volume 99 of Radical
History Review, scheduled to appear in Fall 2007.




          ==========================================================
               From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List