The deadline for proposals for the 2012 American Academy of Religion annual meeting is Tuesday, March 13.

Here are the suggested topics for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group:

• For a possible cosponsored session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group, we invite papers on the intersection of contemporary indigenous traditions and paganism related to indigeneity, authenticity, and legitimacy. These may, for example, analyze how claims of indigenous status are used in relationship with political and theological issues or how groups deploy strategies around the issue of “authenticity.”
•  The major metaphors of any religious tradition speak to ways humans connect with the Divine. Ancient — and some contemporary — forms of Paganism frequently employed notions of sacrifice and reciprocity. Modern Wicca, to name one tradition, consciously rejects the notion of sacrifice and replaces it with sexual intercourse as a metaphor both of internal psychological integration and as cosmic creation and fertility, from the Great Rite to the Dance of the Maypole. We invite papers on how these metaphors persist, interact, and manifest within historical and contemporary Paganism and how they frame interactions among participants.
•  Is there really such a thing as Pagan “theology,” or is the term itself too embedded within an Abrahamic religious context? Should Pagan theology more accurately be described as praxology, or theories of Pagan praxis? What would Pagan praxology look like and how would it advance our understanding of religion?

More information here.