Statement of Purpose: This Group provides space for theoretically-informed discussion of the relationship between religion, affect, and emotion.
The Group serves as a meeting point for conversations on the affective, noncognitive, and passional dimensions of religion coming from diverse fields, including anthropology, comparative religion, psychology, decolonial theory, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and theology. Proposals drawing on these theoretical resources to examine specific religious traditions, shifting historical understandings of religion and affect/emotion, comparative work that looks at affective forms across traditions, and broader theoretical reflections are all welcome.
Call for Papers: We consider paper proposals on the theoretical and practical intersections of religion, affect, and emotion, with particular interest in the following themes, and with particular encouragement to submit proposals that engage the 2016 AAR theme, Revolutionary Love.
• Affective approaches to race, migration, and mass incarceration, including questions about borders, surveillance, media images of refugees, police brutality, and solitary confinement.
• Affect, religion, and literature, possibly with a focus on the work of James Baldwin or Claudia Rankine.
• The “transmission of affect” as applied to politics. Moving beyond rhetorical analysis. How to use and resist affect in the public sphere.
• The convergence of love and the political. Assessing and resisting politics of rage.
• The question of form: what formal and genre decisions help us to analyze affect in scholarly work? How are intelligibility and unintelligibility deployed in work on affect?
• Affect and Emotion in South Asian Religion: for a possible co-sponsored session with the Religion in South Asia Section, papers exploring the application of recent theoretical discussions about affect and emotion to the study of religion in South Asia. Contact: Daniel Heifetz at [email protected]
• Donovan Schaefer’s book Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (2015) as it pertains to animals (for a possible co-sponsorship with Animals and Religion Group).
Leadership:
Chair Donovan Schaefer, [email protected] Term: 2013 – 2018
M. Gail Hamner, [email protected] Term: 2013 – 2018
Steering Committee Abigail Kluchin, [email protected] Term: 2013 – 2018
J. Barton Scott, [email protected] Term: 2014 – 2019
Jill Petersen Adams, [email protected] Term: 2013 – 2018
Liane Carlson, [email protected] Term: 2013 – 2018
Tam Parker, [email protected] Term: 2014 – 2019
