[ecrea] Call for papers: International Conference on Digital Religion

*Announcing

The International Conference on
Digital Religion

January 12-15, 2012

The Center for Media, Religion and Culture
University of Colorado-Boulder

‘Digital Religion” today includes a myriad of examples: an evangelical mommy
blogging community, a Jewish online dating service, a virtual pilgrimage of
the Muslim ritual of Hajj, offering Poojas on an online Hindu Temple
service, a YouTube series of an ex-Catholic nun, the invention of Kosher
phones, playing "Al-Quraysh", a Muslim video game, an Anglican Church on
Second Life, or a religious iPhone app like iTalk to God. What is striking
about the proliferation of this digital religious culture is not only the
creative adoption of new technologies, but also the challenges and
possibilities these technologies offer for religious meaning-making in
modern society. Both individuals and religious institutions today vigorously
appropriate interactive forms of media generating new religious deliberative
spaces, religious publics and counterpublics, and competing sources of
authority, and collapsing in the process old boundaries of what constitutes
the religious realm.
This international conference will bring together scholars of media and
religion and producers of digital religion content from a variety of
religious traditions to reflect on the implications of these developments.
Papers and panels may address, but should not be limited to questions such
as:

  Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of digital
religion
  Relationships between offline and online forms of religious practice
  The emergence of networked religious communities
  The cultivation of authority and legitimacy in digital religious spaces
  Digitization of religion and the implications for scriptural text
dissemination and reception
  Mediatization of religion in digital spaces
  Technological mediation and religious authenticity
  Representations of religion in digital platforms
  Intersections of religion and the market
  Influence on the religious public sphere
  Questions of mundane, "banal" or "implicit" religion
  Digital religious transnationalism
  Religious aesthetics and sensations in digital forms
  Religions and spiritualities in social networking
  Generational and demographic difference and issues
Please send a 300-word abstract by June 15, 2011 to
(MediaReligion /at/ Colorado.EDU)

Invited speakers include:

-Stig Hjarvard, Department of Film&  Media Studies at the University of
Copenhagen

-Jeremy Stolow, Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University,
Montréal

-Heidi Campbell, Department of Communication at Texas A&M University,


For further information and comments please contact Stewart Hoover at
(stewart.hoover /at/ colorado.edu) or Nabil Echchaibi at
(nabil.echchaibi /at/ colorado.edu)
A detailed conference Website will be available shortly at
http://cmrc.colorado.edu/


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