Call for Papers: Yale-Edinburgh Group

By dri January 20th, 2021 in Call for Papers

Oral, Print, and Digital Cultures in World Christianity and the History of Mission

The next meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on World Christianity and the History of Mission is to take place on-line, from New College, University of Edinburgh, from 22-24 June 2021. More information about the on-line format will be provided later.

We anticipate that the on-line format will increase the number of paper proposals that are submitted. Yet we will also be working with a condensed time schedule due to the multiple timezones we will be spanning. We will prioritise early career scholars and offer two options for paper presentations: (1) a short oral presentation in real time (15min + Q&A time) and (2) a presentation in the form of a pre-recorded 3 min video with a single slide.

When submitting an abstract please ensure that:

• it is close to the theme of the conference,
• you state the year you gained your PhD, or your student status
• your preference for short oral presentation or pre-recorded 3 min video. Depending on demand, you may not be offered your first choice.

The theme of the meeting is the same as that of the cancelled 2020 conference, Oral, Print, and Digital Cultures in World Christianity and the History of Mission.

Oral, Print, and Digital Cultures in World Christianity and the History of Mission.

Studies in world Christianity and the history of mission have not been afraid to engage the topic of culture. However, it has often been discussed in terms of European Christian culture’s encounter with another, whether that be Confucian and Hindu culture, or the indigenous cultures of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. This year’s theme uses the language of culture to speak about three different mediums in which the Christian message is communicated and the Christian life is practiced. These cultures are operative simultaneously in the contemporary world even though there has been a chronological trajectory in their development.

Oral culture is a vibrant dimension of Christian expression, from the psalms of David to the preaching of Jesus and the prayers of the saints. Methodist missionaries, following the legacy of the Wesley brothers, often preached and sung their faith. Christian singing would be one of the bases for African American spirituals and ghazals and bhajans in India. For Pentecostals and charismatics, prophecy and glossolalia would often be seen as markers of the faith. In the Philippines, Christ’s passion has been recalled through the indigenized form of the pasyón epic, whereas apparitions of the Virgin in Guadalupe and La Vang, and of Saint George in Palestine have been vehicle to narrate the faith.

Print culture has also been an important Christian medium. Missionaries used print to propagate their message through vernacular Bibles and hymnbooks, catechisms and apologetic tracts. The wide spread translation and dissemination of The Pilgrims Progress, for example, has both globalized 17^th century Puritan Christianity and provided a narrative for adapting local virtues. Books in vernaculars have contributed to the formation of independent nation-states, and to competitive ethno-nationalism. The introduction of the Western printing press by missionaries to Shanghai, helped transform the treaty port to become a major hub of print capitalism. Christian magazines and lantern slides were used to convey images of distant peoples to sending churches and mobilize publics against slavery and opium, whereas the production of novels and pamphlets unified diasporic populations as transnational imagined communities.

As we have entered the digital age, the growing digital culture has opened up new vistas for world Christianity and the history of mission. It has introduced new methods of engaging our subject, from the digitization of archives, to visualization of missionaries on maps with respect to centers of political and religious power. Digital technologies have opened up new possibilities for mission across borders, Christian public engagement over social media, and connecting Christian migrants around the globe. Congregations use interactive websites to develop virtual membership, or to increase the activity and commitment of current members – and since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, church on-line has become the norm in many countries. Yet Christian online activities are also managed through digital state censorship such as the Great Firewall of China. Digital media also exposes hierarchies of resourcing, showing which Christian communities have access to the technological infrastructure for a vibrant on-line presence, and which communities are marginalized by their poverty or lack of expertise.

Oral, print, and digital cultures may transcend societies, but they find unique expressions throughout world Christianity and the history of mission. We anticipate our conference to open up a vibrant interdisciplinary conversation between historians, theologians, social scientists studying religion, as well as to include scholars of other disciplines, such as media studies and digital humanities.

Abstracts should be submitted by 20^th March 2021 to cswc-events@ed.ac.uk