Interested in shaping the regional conference?
2025 AAR-SW Regional Conference Call for Papers
Religion and the Power of Stories
The Southwest region of the American Academy of Religion invites proposals for the SWCRS conference, Feb. 28–Mar 2, 2025, in Irving, Texas. The submission deadline is October 1, 2024. For questions about the CFP or the conference, contact Cindy Dawson (AAR-SW Chief Regional Officer) at [email protected] or Carl Hughes (AAR-SW President-Elect) at [email protected].
Our theme is Religion and the Power of Stories. Our Call for Papers invites proposals on any topic related to the field of Religious Studies but especially paper, panel, or roundtable proposals related to the conference theme and might address the following questions:
• Whose stories do we privilege and why? How do we ensure that we are telling the stories of others respectfully in our research and writing? Whose stories appear in texts, rituals, or religious arts, and how do their retellings function in the larger context of a religious tradition? How do texts tell their stories? What narrative elements within stories shape those stories? How might we be more inclusive about the stories that we tell? What do we do when new stories disrupt old narratives?
• How have we stretched our students to consider stories that differ widely from their own and to find meaning in and connection to them? How do we employ stories in our teaching? How might we incorporate the use of interviews and storytelling in our classroom assignments?
• Presentations that explore stories that disrupt, expand, confirm, amend, and/or question traditional narratives are all welcome.
• Presenters are also invited to draw on their own stories. What role do our stories play in our teaching and research? We invite scholars to consider sharing stories about their teaching, how they came to their particular research interests, their vocational discernment, what stories impacted them most, and more.
In addition to proposing a paper, panel, or roundtable, this submission form invites several other forms of participation:
• Book club sessions on books connected to our conference theme
• Specialized roundtable sessions, such as: stories in pedagogy; stories and their intersection with scholarship in positions that are contingent, adjunct, nontraditional, etc.; monographs in progress or in print by scholars in our region; oral history in research
Proposals due October 16, 2024 (new, extended deadline).
View past conference programs here.
