LOOKING FOR PANELISTS ON WOMEN AND RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY FOR THE 2011 BERKS
I have some research based on ethnographic work with a contemporary American women’s progressive religious reading group focusing on how “heretical” texts like The Gnostic Gospels and the Da Vinci Code are useful to women navigating patriarchal religious institutions. I would like to organize a panel related to women’s religion/spirituality for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on 9-12 June 2011. I am seeking 1-2 other panelists, a chair, and a discussant. Papers can address any historical period or national/geographic tradition.
Themes my work addresses:
How reading creates/facilitates the formation of religious community, how lay people appropriate mass media to form religious identities, lived religion, the religious left, the sacred feminine and feminist religious practices
If you might be interested in participating in such a panel, please contact me:
Erin Smith
Associate Professor of American Studies
Associate Director, Gender Studies Program
University of Texas at Dallas
erins@utdallas.edu
If interested, potential panelists should send a one-page cv and 250-word abstract to me as WORD attachments or pasted into the body of an email before March 1. Submission deadline for completed panel proposal is 15 March.