Sexuality, Relationships, Marriage, and Family Life

2025 Call for Papers

Emma McDonald Kennedy, Villanova University (PA)

emma.kennedy@villanova.edu

Julie Hanlon Rubio, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University (CA), jrubio@scu.edu

 

This year’s conference theme, “The Locus of Theological Education,” invites us to consider how Christians’ professional, linguistic, racial, geographic, political, gendered, sexual and ecological loci inform their faith and their ways of seeking understanding. The conference centers on three related questions:

 

●      How do theologians’ loci affect their theological work?

●      How will theology’s evolving context impact the life of the Church or the academy?

●      Where is the path forward for theology?

 

Our session invites papers, panel proposals, and workshop proposals that take up one or more of these key questions as they relate to the loci of family, marriage, relationships, and sexuality. Preference will be shown to proposals that explicitly engage the conference theme.

 

Potential topics might include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

 

●      Relevance of one’s experience/status related to family, sexuality, relationship for theological work, including scholarship, teaching, and service within and beyond the academy

●      Challenges that theological employment or the precarity of the academy pose for relationships, sexuality, and family life

●      Issues related to relationships, sexuality, marriage, and family life in theological settings––church, academy, professional societies, etc.

●      New loci or overlooked spaces for theologies of relationships, family, marriage, and sexuality

●      How different theological loci, both locally and globally, shape theologies of relationships, family, marriage, and sexuality

 

Proposals should be 250-500 words in length and include one’s current institutional affiliation and position. Proposals should be emailed to both conveners by December 15, 2024. Scholars will be notified of the status of their proposals by mid-January 2025.