Anthropology, Psychology and Religion

2024 Call for Papers

Dylan Belton, Villanova University (PA)

dylan.belton@villanova.edu

Bruno Shah, OP, Providence College

bshah@providence.edu

Wesley Sutermeister, University of Findlay

wesley.sutermeister@findlay.edu

This year, the section on Anthropology, Psychology and Religion invites proposals along two lines:

[1] We are pleased to host a book symposium on Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression (Liturgical Press, 2022), by Jessica Coblentz. CTS members will recall that Dr. Coblentz’s work recently won The Best Book 2022 award from the society. Her original and timely work has received other awards of acclaim from the Catholic Media Association and the Association of Catholic Publishers. Given this year’s convention theme of “Vulnerability and Flourishing,” as well as our sectional topics and the CTS’s commitment to the most vital concerns of theology and practice, we invite proposals that thoughtfully engage Dust in the Blood. Proposals might address topics and questions of methodology (e.g., first-person perspective, speaking of suffering), biblical figure (e.g., Hagar, desert, and exile experience), and wider implication (e.g., mental health today, theologian as teacher and healer). Proposals might just as well put Coblentz into direct conversation with other authors and interpretive frameworks. We are grateful that the author will be present to respond to the papers, and we hope to provide successful proposals with copies of the book.

[2] Although not limited to the following, we also invite papers that address topics and questions such as these:

• ·       How trauma is felt, inscribed, and remembered in the flesh, as well as potential healing and liberation. Here it might be enriching to explore the intersections of social and theological concepts and meanings (stigma/stigmata; wounded/crucified; healing/resurrection, or other more appropriate pairs). What are the ethical or theological implications of sacralizing wounds or traumatic experiences?
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• ·       How the social-historical effect of institutionalized oppression and traumatization can be purified. Do social identities preserve memories of past generations’ victimization; and if so, how is this memory transmitted, evaluated, and transformed? Are there religious practices that might help the civic populace to find greater prospects for flourishing and healing from the past, their own and that of their historical communities? Should the church promote civic rituals of purification, confession, exorcism, etc.? What might that look like?
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• ·       How religious rituals and objects - as means for the self-making of humans - are socially produced and used to promote human flourishing or its negative (sociogenesis). This discussion does not need to be limited to sacraments and sacramentals but could include a wide array of ritual objects in cross-cultural contexts.
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• ·       How notions of “self” and “identity” are manufactured, explored, and transcended in religious traditions. Are there ways in which self-denial or self-transcendence are vital vulnerabilities for creative living? Proposals could address a wide range of issues: from the self-consciousness of Jesus and the apostles “in Christ” to a wide variety of relationships: self-nature, self-other, I-Thou, and other pairs. Are these distinctions permanent and fundamental, or conventional and relative? Are there non-dualist frames that might better orient human thought and action?
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• ·       Theological anthropology of religious leaders who serve as exemplars or mediators on behalf of a community: messiahs, priests, shamans, bodhisattvas/arhats, rabbis, etc. How are these figures understood, sacralized, and interacted with? In what ways do they set the “norm” or “standard” for ideal “humaning” for good or ill? In a real sense, how do their bodies figure into their “embodying” or fleshing out of the ideals or teachings of the community?
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• ·       The tension between caring for the wounded while actively wounding that exists in spiritual and religious affiliations. For example, has Nouwen’s image of the wounded healer seen its day? Does Pope Francis’s image of the field hospital help in understanding and addressing this dangerous tension? As another example, and in a different vein, one might evaluate the metaphors of sacrifice and victimhood in ritual and mysticism.
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• ·       The influence of toxic environments (natural, social, personal) on spiritual and psychological well-being, and how environments that promote integral liberation can be grown in our communities. Specific topics could address how nature is conceived and its relationship to the human and social world. Important here will be our imagining of other possibilities in terms of how “environmental action” becomes enfleshed.
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• ·       Related to the previous theme, how insights from evolutionary anthropology might help us see our interconnectedness with other life forms and their development (past, present, and future). How can we feel, experience, or remember these interconnections in our being, given that we have been finely tuned to interact with our environment in a wide variety of ways? What related theological or religious themes and practices become important given such an understanding of human developmental history? How might the latest accounts of human origins within evolutionary anthropology help us think through the relationship between vulnerability, flourishing, and inter-species dependency?
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• ·       Recent interdisciplinary scholarship on human-animal relations and the category of “animality” has often made vulnerability and dependency a central theme. Specific topics in this area could address: the framing of vulnerability within this field of study; what this approach to vulnerability uniquely adds to our understanding of vulnerability and flourishing; what the disagreements within the field are; what ecological destruction does to our sense of and framing of human and non-human animal vulnerability.
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• ·       The difference and relationship between PTSD and moral injury, particularly in War Veterans. Recent developments in the care of military vets recognizes that the “soul” and conscience can be gravely wounded: committing actions that violate one’s conscience, in obedience to an authority whose motivations and interests are radically questioned, can lead to devastating pathologies (previously lumped under PTSD). How can theologians and religionists learn from and speak to this emerging awareness?
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• ·       Recent data on the mental health of “Generation Z.” Some data suggests that “Zoomers” are alarmingly disposed toward anxious and depressive pathologies. Commentators alternatively declare that these young people are uniquely “resilient” or more “coddled” than ever. Do Catholic, Christian, and other religious educators have a special purchase upon this phenomenon, given their religious theories and practices?
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Please submit proposals to the conveners by December 15, 2023. They should be no more than 500 words in length and include the presenter’s institutional affiliation, position, and contact information, as well as any requests for AV support. Ordinarily, presenters should be members of the CTS at the time of the meeting in the summer of 2024.