CURA Seeks Proposals For Religion and World Affairs Colloquium
The Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), an affiliated center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston
University, is seeking proposals for their 2018-19 Religion and World Affairs Colloquium.
The theme for the 2018-19 colloquium is “Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking.” Proposals from any discipline that explore the ways in which religious institutions, beliefs, and practices support or combat violence, promote reconciliation, or serve as a source of violent social division are welcome. CURA aims build a working group that draws from diverse disciplines, methods, and regions of the world.
A committee of faculty will select the proposals from among those submitted, with the idea of accepting approximately 10. Participants in the Colloquium will be asked to prepare a working paper of 5,000-8,000 words that will be scheduled for presentation next year. The papers will be made available a week in advance of their scheduled discussion. Fellows will be expected to attend all sessions, read papers in advance, and provide feedback for other participants. Colloquium sessions will be held on Fridays from 1:00-2:30 p.m. (on weeks where the School of Theology does not hold faculty meetings), about twice a month. Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend for successful participation of the colloquium. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2018.
Proposals are welcomed from scholars from any school or college at BU. The 2017-18 Colloquium focused on “Religion and Social Engagement,” and included faculty, staff, and graduate students from anthropology, religion, philosophy, the School of Theology, the graduate program in Religion, and the Pardee School. The Colloquium builds on the Religion Fellows Program sponsored by the School of Theology annually since 2010, which has brought together faculty and graduate students from throughout BU to develop research papers on an important theme in the study of religion. STH remains a co-sponsor and active participant in the CURA Colloquium.
The papers will be prepared by both the BU fellows and invited scholars from outside BU. The colloquium sessions will be open to the general public, with the expectation that all attendees will read the papers in advance and that the sessions will focus on providing feedback and suggestions to the authors. At the end of the colloquium, we anticipate collecting a group of the papers into an edited volume or a themed edition of a relevant journal.