[csaa-forum] CFP: Special edition of Cultural Studies Review - "Secular Discomforts: Religion and Cultural Studies."

[Sophie Sunderland]

**Apologies for cross-posting**
 
Call for papers: "Secular Discomforts: Religion and Cultural Studies." 
Special edition of Cultural Studies Review
 
Guest co-editors: Sophie Sunderland (University of Western Australia); Holly Randell-Moon (Macquarie University)
 

Secularisms shape the way in which religion is placed in community, challenged politically, and lived privately and publicly. Whilst Cultural Studies has long focused on the micropolitics of everyday life that shape discourses in intimate, relational, sensual and politically charged ways, secularism has largely escaped attention. The need to challenge the conceits of secularism is indicated in Stuart Hall's keynote address for the 2007 'Cultural Studies Now' conference. Reflecting on the importance of the politics of representation, Hall argued that Cultural Studies' next challenge was to explain why an Islamic fundamentalist movement has so far constituted the only significant opposition to neo-liberal capitalism.[1] <https://owa2003.admin.uwa.edu.au/exchange/smsunderland/Drafts/?Cmd=new#_ftn1>  So what keeps secularism in the Cultural Studies closet? And, more importantly, what complications are set in motion when 'doing Cultural Studies' with religion? This issue heeds Hall's call for Cultural Studies' engagement with the politics of religion and neo-liberal capitalism from the perspective of discomfort. Whilst discomfort signals uncertainty and change, it is also a catalyst for exploration, enquiry, anxiety and frustration. What might make explorations of religion and secularism uncomfortable, undesirable, unorthodox, and perhaps unnamable? What privileges accompany closeting the religious body, or the secular body? What forms of disquiet and discomfort create 'religious' and 'secular' responses in the media and political sphere? What might it mean to be 'relaxed and comfortable' in relation to the religious? How do specific cultural, political and corporeal economies position intellectual engagements with the secular and religious? What do representations of religion communicate about living religion, living secularism, and doing Cultural Studies?

 

Possible areas of analysis include:

 

Pedagogical engagements with religion

Postcolonial secularisms

Secularism and gender politics

Religious corporealities

Religion and emotion

Religion and economy

Secular constructions of medicine, health and wellbeing 

Secularism's influence on the academy

 

Please send abstracts of 300 words maximum to Dr Sophie Sunderland and Dr Holly Randell-Moon by 1st October 2010 for consideration. Full papers of maximum 8000 words will be due at the beginning of May 2011.

 

Dr Sophie Sunderland 

sophie.sunderland at uwa.edu.au <mailto:sophie.sunderland at uwa.edu.au> 

 

Dr Holly Randell-Moon 

holly.randell-moon at mq.edu.au <mailto:holly.randell-moon at mq.edu.au>  

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[1] <https://owa2003.admin.uwa.edu.au/exchange/smsunderland/Drafts/?Cmd=new#_ftnref1>  A transcript of Hall's keynote address can be found at the website for the Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London: <http://www.uel.ac.uk/ccsr/culturalstudiesnow.htm <http://www.uel.ac.uk/ccsr/culturalstudiesnow.htm> >.