The trouble with book lists — like this list of “27 essential Pagan books” — is that no two readers’ lists are the same.
On the other hand, I am pretty pleased with number 16.
And I am happy to see Michael Strmiska getting some recognition too.
Tag Archives: scholarship
Pagan Studies Conference Timed for Pantheacon
Announcement of a new conference:
Pagans in Dialogue with the Wider World: A Pagan Studies Symposium
Friday, February 15, 2013 at San José State University (semi-concurrent with PantheaCon, February 15-18, 2013, DoubleTree Hotel, San Jose, California)
Sponsored by San José State University, Humanities Dept., Comparative Religious Studies Program. Organizers: Lee Gilmore (SJSU) & Amy Hale (St. Petersburg College)
Contemporary Paganism, in all its varieties, stands at a unique cultural and religious intersection that can provide insights for a wide range of global, social, and political subjects, beyond its own inward facing concerns. For this symposium, we are calling for scholarly submissions that focus on Paganism’s contributions to and engagements with broader cultural and religious dialogues in an increasingly pluralist world. These could include, but are not limited to, explorations of Paganisms’ endeavors in community, economic, media, health, legal, social justice, and institutional development work, as well as activist, applied, interdisciplinary, and interfaith work.
More generally, all submissions that critically examine Paganism(s) in relationship to categories such as religion, culture, gender, identity, authenticity, power, and ritual — among other possible frameworks — are welcome. In addition, all papers presented at the symposium will be considered for publication in a special issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies.
All proposals & queries should be sent to pagansymposium@gmail.com
Deadline: September 15, 2012
More info, including submission requirements & a pdf of this call, may be found at the site.
9th Claremont Pagan Studies Conference
Conference on Current Pagan Studies: Pagan Sensibilities in Action
January 26 & 27, 2013, Claremont, California
Call for Papers
This year we will focus on Pagan Sensibilities in Action. We welcome papers that discuss how our pagan perspectives manifest as our lived experiences in artistic expression, personal and collective practice, the manner in which we hold power, and other engagements, including involvement in politics, social justice, ecological concerns and economics. How do Pagan theo(a)logies inform our being in the world?
This year we are encouraging proposals for academic panels. Please contact us early if you would like to organize a panel.
We are looking for papers from all disciplines. A community needs artists, teachers, scientists, healers, historians, philosophers, educators, thinkers, activists, etc.
As usual, we are using Pagan in its most inclusive form, covering pagans, wiccans, witches and the numerous hybrids that have sprung up as well as any indigenous groups that feel akin to or want to be in conversation with Pagans.
Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words and are due by September 30, 2012. Go to our website for advice on presenting papers. Please email abstracts to pagan_conference@yahoo.com
Pomegranate 13.1 Table of Contents
The newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies went to the printer last month. Contents are available online to subscribers or by purchase of individual articles.
PDFs of book reviews and of Caroline Tully’s article, “Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions,” may be downloaded free.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Response to Dominique Beth Wilson
Michael York
The Birth of Counterjihadist Terrorism: Reflections on some Unspoken Dimensions of 22/7
Egil Asprem
Pagan Saxon Resistance to Charlemagne’s Mission: ‘Indigenous’ Religion and ‘World’ Religion in the Early Middle Ages
Carole Cusack
Contemporary Paganism, Utopian Reading Communities, and Sacred Nonmonogamy: The Religious Impact of Heinlein’s and Starhawk’s Fiction
Christine Hoff Kraemer
John Michell, Radical Traditionalism and the Emerging Politics of the Pagan New Right
Amy Hale
Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions
Caroline Jane Tully
Book Review: Kerriann Godwin, ed., The Museum of Witchcraft: A Magical History (Boscastle, Cornwall: The Occult Art Company, 2011), 142 pp., £34.00 (hardcover). PDF . Reviewed by Ethan Doyle White
Book Review: Lee Gilmore, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 238 pp., (+ dvd) $24.95 (paperback).
PDF. Reviewed by Jason Lawton Winslade
An ‘Extraordinary’ British Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS
Exploring the Extraordinary 4th Conference
22nd-23rd September, 2012
Holiday Inn, York
Since its inception in 2007, members of Exploring the Extraordinary have organised three successful academic conferences that have brought together researchers from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds. The purpose of these events has been to encourage a wider dissemination of knowledge and research, and an interdisciplinary discussion of extraordinary phenomena and experience. By ‘extraordinary’ we refer to phenomena and experiences that are considered to be beyond the mundane, referring to those that have been called supernatural, paranormal, mystical, transcendent, exceptional, spiritual, magical and/or religious, as well as the relevance of such for human culture.
We are looking for submissions for our fourth conference, and would like to invite presentation proposals on topics related to the above. Please submit a 300-500 word paper abstract to Dr Madeleine Castro and Dr Hannah Gilbert (ete.network@gmail.com) by the 6th April 2012. Accepted papers should be on PowerPoint, no longer than 20 minutes, and intended for an interdisciplinary audience. Please include contact information and a brief biographical note.
For more information, and to see past conference schedules, please visit http://etenetwork.weebly.com
One Week Left for AAR Paper Proposals
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?
Graham Harvey on Animism
In this podcast, Graham Harvey of the Open University, one of the leading figures in Pagan studies, speaks about animism—our relations with other-than-human communities.
It is one of a series of podcasts featuring leading figures in different areas of religious studies.
Five Kinds of “Witch” and Other Reflections on the Academic Study of Contemporary Paganism
Australian writer, blogger, and scholar Caroline Tully continues her interview with Professor Ronald Hutton on the history of witchcraft and related topics.
On the perceptions of conflict between scholars and practitioners:
When some Pagans now express hostility to academics, they are generally doing so in defence of ideas which were originally articulated by other academics. Most often, they are defending what was the general scholarly orthodoxy about historical witchcraft in the mid twentieth century, represented finally and most famously by Margaret Murray of the University of London. What bewilders and angers some members of the public most about professional scholarship now is not actually that it is entrenched and manufactures consent, but that it has overturned many of the received truths of previous decades. To challenge orthodoxy effectively is currently the fastest and most certain way to make an academic career, and the pace of argument and change can be bewildering for people on the outside who want stability and certainty, or at least to continue to believe what they were originally taught about something.
The forthcoming issue of The Pomegranate will include Tully’s own article on this topic, and it should be available as a free download.
Survey on Pagan Prayer
Evidently it’s the season for surveys. This one comes from researchers at the University of Warwick. I recognize one of the names, a sociologist of religion who has published in The Pomegranate.
If I take it, I will say that I do not engage in petitionary prayer very often, preferring to think in terms of invocation, of invitation, or of attuning one’s self to the deity’s “frequency,” so to speak.
Survey on Pagan Needs
Gwendolyn Reece, a librarian at American University in Washington, D.C., with a background in religious studies, is conducting a survey “to understand the importance of different practices to the Pagan/Witch/Heathen community in the United States and identify the needs, challenges, barriers, and perceptions of risk faced by Pagans/Witches/Heathens that influence their ability to practice, and whether there are variations within segments of the community. ”
I have not yet learned if she plans an academic paper or publication with the result, but I am attempting to find out.