The American Academy of Religion is now inviting submissions to the following sessions of their annual meeting. Please read more for more information on the sessions and submission guideline.“Happiness” as a category for philosophy of religion – contact Andrew Irvine (andrew.irvine@maryvillecollege.edu)

Paper proposals are invited for a session on “Happiness and Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion.” The session aims to explore how critical philosophical agents engage with and/or against diverse religious-cultural formations to understand happiness (in theory, practice, affect, etc.). Papers that interrogate the intersections of religion, culture, and happiness, especially from non-Western, decolonial, feminist, or otherwise critical standpoints are welcomed. Possible questions include: How do different religious traditions conceptualize happiness, and what might be the implications for a global ethics? In what ways do colonial histories shape religious understandings of happiness? How do gender, race, and class intersect with religious teachings on happiness? Can global-critical philosophies of religion offer alternative frameworks for understanding happiness; therapeutic cures to a quest for happiness; a constructive philosophy of happiness?

Womb Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Conversation – co-sponsored with the Society for Asian and Comparative Religion, contact Agnieszka Rostalska (arostalska@gmail.com)

The metaphor and notion of womb have been the focus of inquiry and theorization in many cosmological and philosophical systems. The Chinese classic Daodejing frequently alludes to the metaphor of the womb/vagina as the generative force of the cosmos (mother of all things), e.g., the spirit of the valley and the gate of the obscure she-best. The Arabic term for compassion/mercy raḥama comes from the root raḥm (womb). The Buddhist term for universal Buddha-nature, tathāgatagarbha, is literally the womb (garbha) of the thus-gone/come-one. This co-sponsored panel invites scholars and philosophers to join a cross-cultural conversation about different womb cosmologies, their relations to love ethics, as well as their promises in bringing forth a friendlier future.

Global Philosophies of Religion beyond the Text – co-sponsored with the Anthropology of Religion unit, contact Tim Knepper (tim.knepper@drake.edu)

In collaboration with the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion Unit, the Anthropology of Religion unit seeks to sponsor a panel engaging with non-textual and non-Western sources for the philosophy of religion. Papers should consider forms of lived religious reasoning, argumentation, or enactment from sources other than texts, such as oral traditions, rituals, performances, arts, etc. Papers that explore “philosophies from below,” are welcomed, including non-hegemonic and marginalized systems of knowledge, indigenous ways of knowing, conspiracy and other forms of stigmatized knowledge, peripheral epistemologies, etc., and that treat those forms of knowledge as valuable resources for a cross-cultural inquiries in the philosophy of religion.

African and Afro-diasporic philosophy of religion – co-sponsored with African Diaspora Religions Unit, and African Religions Unit, contact Nathan Loewen (nrloewen@ua.edu)

The field of African philosophy of religion, including scholarship on African traditional religions, Christianity and Islam in the African continent, or on syncretic expressions like Candomblé and Umbanda in South America, or like Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería and Trinidadian Orisha in the Caribbeans, to quote but a few, is a rapidly expanding one. The past decade has notably seen overviews that classify the concept of God in African traditional religions as resulting in modified monotheisms with either theistic or non-theistic conceptions of a limited-God, up to panentheism (Aga Adaga, Emmanuel Ofuasia); as well as scholarship on the implications that the concept of God or of that of ancestor bear on the meaning of life (Thaddeus Metz); or the burgeoning of studies that examine how ritual-centric practices, embodied epistemologies and syncretic dynamics can enrich philosophical debates on metaphysics and epistemology (José Eduardo Porcher). This panel is an invitation to consider how selected issues and debates within this rich scholarship in the field of African and Afro-diasporic philosophy of religion can question the categories and expand the scope and methods of traditional philosophy of religion.

Submit proposals here.
Please indicate a preference to present in person or virtually.