News of the extended network of faculty, alumni, students, visiting researchers, and mission partners is regularly updated, and some of the big ideas or major events in Global Christianity are covered in the CGCM News.
Dana L. Robert Awarded the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professorship
Hearty congratulations to the Center for Global Christianity and Mission's Director, Dr. Dana L. Robert, on being awarded Boston University's William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professorship!
Alumnus Rev. Canon Ted Karpf Presenting at “AIDS, Activism, and American Christianity: A Conversation”
BU School of Theology alumnus the Reverend Canon Ted Karpf ('74) will be presenting alongside other HIV/AIDS activists in "AIDS, Activism, and American Christianity: A Conversation."
This virtual event is presented by the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network and will be held on Thursday, May 5th at 8:00 pm EST.
Register here to get the link and visit this site for more information.
Highlights from Faculty Associate Dr. Jonathan Calvillo
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission celebrates the diverse and valuable contributions of our Faculty Associates.
Here are some of Dr. Calvillo's accomplishments from the last year:
Publications
Calvillo, Jonathan E. 2021. “Religión Comunitaria y Opiniones Divergentes del Barrio: Residentes y Feligreses en Santa Ana, California,” [“Community Religion and Diverging Opinions about the Barrio: Residents and Parishioners in Santa Ana, California”] in Formas de Creer en la Ciudad, edited by Hugo José Suárez, Karina Barcenas Barajas, & Cecilia Delgado Molina. México DF: IIS-UNAM.
Calvillo, Jonathan E. 2021. “Sustaining Borderland Traditions in a Latinx Pentecostal Church,” in City of Dreams: Los Angeles as a Cradle for Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity, edited by Richard Flory and Diane Winston. New York: Routledge Press.
Presentations
“Book Panel Session: Ethnography, Performance, and Religious and Cultural Identity in the Twenty-First Century.” San Antonio, TX, American Academy of Religion annual conference (November 2021)
“Negotiating Religious Identity Within Late Modern Contexts.” San Antonio, TX, American Academy of Religion annual conference (November 2021)
“The Saints of Santa Ana, Author Meets Critics Session.” Portland, OR, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion annual conference (October 2021)
“Latino Immigrant Assimilation and Religious Affiliation: Interrogating Normativity in the Field.” Oslo, Norway (virtual), Keynote address for Spring conference of The Research School Religion-Values-Society (April 2021)
“The Radiotron Transmission: Latinx Creatives in the Early Los Angeles Hip Hop Scene.” Albuquerque, NM, SouthWest Popular American Culture Association Conference (February 2021)
Manchester Wesley Research Center Annual Lecture, June 21, 2022.
MWRC Annual Lecture (June 2022)
This year’s annual lecture will be given by Professor J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, President and Baëta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology, Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana.
The lecture will be on Tuesday 21 June 2022 at 5 pm UK time (12/noon Eastern in North America). The title of the lecture is ‘Singing of the Holy Spirit: Wesleyan Hymnody, Methodist Pneumatology, and World Christianity’. This event will be both in-person and online (via Zoom). If you plan to attend online, registration is required here. A short video preview of the lecture can be found on our YouTube channel. Full details, including an abstract for the lecture, are available here.
China Christianity Studies Group 2022 Annual Meeting – May 14, 2022
The 2022 annual meeting of the China Christianity Studies Group will be held virtually one month from today, on Saturday, May 14 – 7:00-9:15 PM Eastern Time (US). The Zoom link is: bates.zoom.us/j/94047436545
The meeting is free and open to the public – no registration is required. Our time together will include presentations and special reports from:
- Daryl Ireland (Boston University)
- Anneke Stasson (Indiana Wesleyan University)
- Zhixi Wang (Shantou University)
- Jennifer Lin (author, Shanghai Faithful; director, Beethoven in Beijing)
- Xiaoxin Wu and Mark Mir (Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, Boston College)
Nominations and elections for the new CCSG Director and Assistant Director will be held during the business meeting portion of this gathering (8:45-9:15 PM). Please consider nominating yourself or an interested colleague for these leadership roles. Any questions related to the positions may be directed to Joseph W. Ho (jwho@umich.edu).
See the meeting agenda here. Please feel free to circulate widely to colleagues, students, friends, and interested community members.
Call for Papers: “Slavery, Law and Religion in the Early Modern Period”, UCLouvain, March 8-9, 2023
Call for Papers
UCLouvain will host a workshop on "Slavery, Law, and Religion in the Early Modern Period" on March 8-9, 2023. See the full flyer here for more details and registration information.
Colonial slavery and the global slave trade recently have received much attention in the historical disciplines. This interdisciplinary workshop seeks to bring together junior researchers - Ph.D. candidates and early-stage postdocs – working on early modern colonial and Christian slavery in the fields of cultural, intellectual, religious, and legal history.
Particularly regarding the 18th century, scholars have compared the transatlantic with the Indian Ocean world. Researchers have also identified shifting attitudes to the institution of slavery as well as the extent to which sources reveal the agency and actions of enslaved human beings, and they have examined distinctions between various forms of dependency, servitude, and slavery.
For example, European intellectuals at the time offered justifications as well as criticisms of enslavement and the slave trade, sometimes unquestioningly supporting the former, while rejecting the latter, sometimes rejecting colonial aspirations but not the enslavement that came with such endeavors. Furthermore, notions of an assumed self-evident nature of slavery that required no justification at all were articulated. In the legal sphere, research has revolved, among further issues, around the legal status of not being able to own property, the agency of Europeans and non-Europeans in legal procedures, the role of contracts, and observable differences between theory and practice. The extent to which enslaved human beings claimed rights or took legal recourse has been a topic of research.
Besides the intellectual and legal dimensions, the cultural and political contexts of various governing entities such as trading companies, mission stations, and indigenous political powers have been analyzed, including a range of motivations, from commercial interests to competing claims to political authority. Moreover, scholars increasingly have begun to turn to religious source material from Christian missions. For example, the extent to which slaveholding pertained to religious settings of conversion, education, and membership in Christian communities has been reconstructed from the archival evidence.
The call for papers addresses researchers in the fields of cultural, intellectual, religious, and legal history and is equally interested in methodical as well as empirically focused contributions. The aim is to address this topic by responding to a series of questions:
• To what extent does slavery offer a perspective on the entanglement between trade, colonial rule, and Christian mission?
• How did political culture motivate change in social formations that included slavery?
• What narrative figures and discursive patterns did individuals employ in order to communicate about slavery and servitude? What specific terms did they use?
• How did local colonial circumstances affect legal practices?
• What was the impact of intellectual texts, such as scholastic tractates or theories of empire, war, and peace, on social practices of enslavement and slave trading?
• To what extent were the rules of natural law and classical Roman law, such as selling oneself or enslaving enemies, relevant in early modern colonial settings?
• In how far was the enslavement of Christians different from that of non-Christians? • Did legal treatments coexist with supposedly scientific, anthropological assertions of inferiority, particularly of non-Europeans?
• What role did the Christian confessional perspective play? Was there a difference particularly between Catholic and Protestant practices of slavery?
• Can we consider a cross-confessional approach to early modern colonial slavery by way of comparative analysis?
Proposal submissions
The workshop “Slavery, Law and Religion in the Early Modern Period” invites junior scholars studying for a Ph.D. degree or having recently completed their dissertation to submit a proposal of 200-250 words for a 20-minute presentation by 31 July 2022 to Dr. Christoph Haar via email christoph.haar@uclouvain.be.
The primary conference language will be English. Proposal submissions in French are also welcome.
GEMN “Women in Mission” Conference May 12-14
Registration is ongoing for the 2022 Global Mission Conference that will be held May 12-14 online on the theme of Women in Mission. Sign up now to join with people around the world to celebrate and reflect on the vital role of women’s participation in God’s mission.
Sponsored by the Global Episcopal Mission Network, the conference will meet for 3 hours via Zoom on each of the 3 days, 1-4 p.m. Eastern Time. Spanish-language translation will be available.
Visit the conference page here for more information. If you're ready to register, you can go directly to the registration page here. The conference is free and open to the public, and donations are encouraged via PayPal on the GEMN donation page. Attendees will receive the Zoom connection information upon registration.
Conference plenary speakers will highlight the history of women in mission, Mothers Union work in Africa, women missionaries’ work today, and Anglican women’s work at the United Nations. Workshops will feature the mission work of women in Mozambique, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Colombia, India, and Korea. The work of religious orders, Episcopal Relief & Development, Five Talents, and the United Thank Offering will be featured, and Mission Spotlights will offer further insight into women’s global work.
Call for Papers from The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (The Circle)
Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (The Circle), U.S Chapter
Circle and Womanist Theologians Sankofa Research Project
Co-editors: Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar, Ph.D., and Yoknyam Dabale, Ph.D. Candidate
Introduction: Musa W. Dube, Ph.D.
The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians was founded in Ghana, West Africa in 1989 with the purpose of amplifying Pan-African and inter-religious theological perspectives of African women. As a means of embodying Sankofa, our next conference in 2024 will be a pilgrimage back to Ghana. In preparation for our return, we are engaged in several research projects that analyze and expand the work of the Circle theological matriarchs, that is, the founders and the earliest champions of the Circle. The Circle has always included sisters both on the continent and in the Diaspora. This call is an expansion of projects already underway that center on the US founding matriarchs, as we endeavor to go back and retrieve their insights and contributions to create more equitable and just futures for African(a) women specifically, and African(a) peoples more generally. Additionally, this is a broader call for exploring other thematic aspects of the Circle, diasporic identities, and womanist theologies.
We invite papers that reflect not only on the crises that have marked African(a) women’s lives in the diaspora but also on future possibilities and collaborations. These opportune two special-volume issues aim to include papers that capture African(a) women’s reviews of and resistance to gender and ethnic-based oppression and violence across various continents; and resilience in the face of and revision of ideologies, attitudes, and theologies that undergird such practices. The scope of this issue is intended to be broad and inclusive of diverse methodologies, theories, and approaches. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
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Archival and scholarly research looking at the scholarship, contributions, and legacies of US Circle Sisters. How have their lives, work, and impact contributed to building communities of resistance, resilience, and revision across various contexts?
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Exploration of the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, places/space, identity, and what we pass on to our future generations.
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Exploration of what it means to belong in diasporic places/spaces and resources for navigating those (physical, social, religious, geopolitical) landscapes.
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Assessment of liberation theologies formed in the context of African(a) culture and religion.
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Analyses of social issues such as gender and ethnic constructions and hierarchies, poverty, marginalization, sexualized violence, language, etc.
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Examination of prejudices and biases, freedom/liberation, and research that examines African(a) women’s personal, professional, public, and political representation emphasizing existing cultural norms/biases, questioning societal prejudices, inequities toward women, and resistance to those practices.
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Investigation of cultural influences on womanist perceptions/perspectives and theologies.
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Circle Members’/Womanists’ transnational and global activism and resistance in all forms.
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Africana Womanists subjectivities and experiences in Academia.
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Intersections of Womanist Theologies and Afro-futurism.
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Exploration of immigrant women and religious identity in the diaspora.
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Analyses of African (a) motherhood, health, marginalization, and belonging in Eurocentric spaces looking at it through the religious lens.
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Reflection on ways in which mainstream Eurocentric feminist theological discourse on gender influence African(a) discourse on womanhood.
Timeline: Please submit a 200-300 word abstract by April 21, 2022
Please send all submissions and any questions to: thecircleuschapter@gmail.com
Decisions on publication will be made on: May 15, 2022
The deadline to complete papers is: September 15, 2022
The volumes are peer-reviewed and will be published by The Journal of Black Women and Religious Cultures
BWRC Formatting Guidelines:
Generally, manuscript lengths are 24 to 32 double-spaced pages, approximately 6,500 to 10,000 words (excluding the abstract, notes, and bibliography). Essays must include an abstract of not more than 200 words.
Manuscripts must be double-spaced, left-justified, using 12-point Times New Roman type, and submitted as Microsoft Word .docX files.
Required writing style: Full Chicago humanities citations as endnotes only
All manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review. To facilitate anonymous peer review, author names should be indicated on a separate cover page but NOT be included on any other page within the submission. The cover page should include the title of the submission, the author’s (s’) name(s), email address, and institutional affiliation(s).
Call for Papers on “Colonial Violence: Secular and Ecclesiastical Perspectives (1919-1975)”
VID Specialized University, Stavanger (Norway)
Centre of Mission and Global Studies
International Conference - Call for Papers
Colonial Violence: Secular and Ecclesiastical Perspectives (1919-1975)
Praia, Cape Verde, 7-9 November 2022
The history of violence in the colonial contexts in the twentieth century has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years. With regard to some colonial spaces, the topic of colonial violence has, in fact, flourished as scholars have deployed new theories and methodologies to explore the mechanisms and typologies of violence across a range of colonial spaces/societies. Despite all this, inter-and transdisciplinary and empirically grounded approaches to colonial violence remain rare and considerably underexplored. Colonial Violence: Secular and Ecclesiastical Perspectives (1919-1975) seeks to gather scholars from different disciplines such as History, Art History, Church History, Legal History, Law, Anthropology, and Historical Sociology to study the phenomenon of colonial violence. The main goal is to discuss the attitudes of secular and ecclesiastical colonial and anti-colonial actors towards colonial violence, in its different forms and manifestations, at different levels from international fora to colonial territories, in colonial and non-colonial contexts.
Colonial Violence: Secular and Ecclesiastical Perspectives (1919-1975) is organized by the Centre of Mission and Global Studies of VID Specialized University of Stavanger, Norway, and will be held on 7-9 November 2022 in Praia, the capital city of Cape Verde, West Africa (Venue: National Library of Cape Verde).
Keynote lectures will be delivered by Diogo Ramada Curto (Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal); Aurora Almada (Instituto de História Contemporânea, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal); Mika Vähäkangas (Lund University, Sweden).
Proposals are invited for twenty-minute papers which explore any aspect of the history of colonial violence. Papers are welcome from any academic discipline. Interdisciplinary papers and studies of the European colonies in Africa and contributions addressing the dynamics of loyalties in the context of approaches to colonial violence are particularly encouraged. Potential topics could include (but are not limited to):
- Methodologies for histories of colonial violence in the twentieth century (source interpretation; archival purge/erasure; theoretical perspectives).
- Typologies of colonial violence (forced labour/slavery, cultural violence; environmental violence; psychological/symbolic violence; violence against cultural heritages, etc.).
- Conflict of loyalties in the justifications/rationalizations and condemnations of colonial violence.
- Resistance and dynamics of loyalties in colonial violence narratives.
- Colonial violence in the international secular and ecclesiastical conferences (Bandung Conference; Vatican II and other ecclesiastical meetings and conferences; the Pan-African Congresses, etc.).
- Supranational and transnational organizations’ reaction to colonial violence (League of Nations; United Nations, World Council of Churches; the Holy See, the World Labour Organization; the World Health Organization).
- Colonial and non-colonial states’ (Germany, the Scandinavian countries) approaches to colonial violence.
- Churches, religion/spirituality, and colonial violence (prohibitions; justifications; complicity and loyalties).
- Native voices, perspectives/representations of colonial violence.
- Legacies, memories/reminiscences, and scars of colonial violence.
Proposals, consisting of a title, an abstract (max. 250 words), and a short academic track record, should be sent to jairzinho.lopes@vid.no by Friday, 15 May 2022. Feedback on the proposals will be sent by 3 June 2022. This conference is scheduled to be held in person in Praia, subject to the global public health situation.
For any queries and further information, please contact the conference organizer, Dr. Jairzinho Lopes Pereira (jairzinho.lopes@vid.no).
More information can be found here.