Posts Tagged ‘prophecy’
Conference University of Aberdeen: SECOND SIGHT AND PROPHECY
Conference University of Aberdeen
14-16 June 2013
Conference organised by the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, and the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen; sponsored by the Folklore Society
This interdisciplinary conference welcomes participants from a range of academic disciplines including History, Folklore, Anthropology, Divinity and Sociology whose research interests cover a wide range of topics exploring varying methods used by different cultures (both now and in the past) to look into the future and the rationale for so doing. The future has always held a fascination for humankind especially in times of tribulation and this is worthy of academic discussion in light of the changes affecting so many of us in our current global context. The role in culture of seers and prophets, by whatever name they are known, and the use of rituals, drugs and sacred sites, etc. will be examined.
Abstracts of 300 words are invited on any of the following or related topics.
These should be submitted by 15 November 2012 to the conference convenor, Dr Alex Sutherland, History Department, University of Aberdeen;
a.m.sutherland@abdn.ac.uk mailto:a.m.sutherland@abdn.ac.uk
Papers might address:
Astrology and its rationale(s) for predicting the future.
Biblical prophecy as depicted in the arts.
Divination in any form.
English attitudes to second sight.
Healing wells.
How modern scientists have appropriated the persona of the prophet or visionary seer.
Landscape and prophecy in art.
Old Norse and later Scandinavian sources on prophecy.
Popular Catholic belief in prophecy before and after the Reformation.
Prophecy in Native American tribes.
Prophetic utterances by the courts, commoners, and the church.
Reading the future in the landscape of settlements.
Renaissance science and astrology.
Sami shamanism.
Second sight and prophecy in Scottish Gaeldom.
Second sight and prophecy in the Viking world.
Second sight in Gaelic traditions as they survived and evolved in Nova Scotian communities.
Seers and seeresses in medieval Icelandic saga literature.
The early Islamic world & its connections with astrology.
The role of prophecies, visions and dreams in poetry and allegorical tales.
The role of prophecy in the origins of Islam, in the pre-Islamic Arabian environment
The use of sites, dreams and ancestors for prophecies by indigenous peoples.
Visual and verbal imagery of natural objects as coded language for the use of entheogens to attain divine / prophetic knowledge.
Welsh prophetic poetry.
When prophecy fails.
Call for Abstracts: A ‘SUPERNATURAL’ HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE – 1870 – PRESENT
Call for Abstracts: “A ‘Supernatural’ History of Central Europe, 1870-present”
Editors: Eric Kurlander (Stetson U.) and Monica Black (U. of Tenn., Knoxville)
Deadline: August 1, 2012
Despite the ostensible “disenchantment of the world” proclaimed by Max Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century, Central Europe has a rich modern history of occultism, folklore, paganism, and popular religion. Yet the “supernatural history” of this ethno- culturally diverse region, extending from the Rhine and Baltic in the North and West to the Vistula and Danube in the South and East, has yet to be written. To be sure, the last twenty years have witnessed a renaissance of interest in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious practice since the late-nineteenth century. With the exception a few excellent monographs on occultism and parapsychology, however, historians have been slow to investigate less conventional aspects of the “supernatural” in Modern Central Europe.
We seek abstracts from scholars interested in exploring the new spiritualities, unique metaphysical experiences and practices, and novel explanations of the world that stood somewhere between natural scientific verifiability and the shopworn truths of traditional religion, and which flourished across Central Europe in the wake of the Second Industrial Revolution. We are keen to see submissions that integrate social, political, and cultural history with “supernatural” thinking and practice, broadly conceived. We are especially interested in submissions that will extend their analysis and explorations beyond national boundaries, connecting people, ideas, experiences, and movements interculturally and transnationally.
Obviously, profound complexities inhere in the term “supernatural”—and no less so in terms like “popular religion,” let alone “superstition.” All of these terms bristle with invidious distinctions and reifications imposed by those seeking to draw sharp contrasts between “orthodox” and “heterogeneous” manifestations of religion and between “science” and “popular belief”—which for our purposes might refer to various methods of explaining, knowing, and experiencing the world that somehow draw on the numinous or the metaphysical. Not only has the presence and broad scope of such practices and ideas not yet been fully explored, but they have also not been properly integrated into larger histories of Central European culture, society, and politics—despite the fact that they have from time to time been the cause of considerable friction.
By bringing together scholars from German, Austrian, Hapsburg, and Slavic Studies, we hope to address questions central to the study of Central European politics, culture, and identity in new ways. What meanings can we assign to the renewal of interest in occultism, “pseudo-science,” and folklore studies in the decades around the fin-de-siècle? How does the waxing or waning of these fields relate to questions of war and peace, revolution and reaction, crisis and stability? How have differences between “science” and “pseudo-science” been articulated in various moments and why? How did folklore, occultism, “pseudo-science” and other “supernatural” practices function as alternatives to organized religion at various moments in the Central European past? How was a fascination with the “supernatural” reflected in popular culture and the arts from the nineteenth century to today? What roles have popular superstition and everyday rituals played in Central European attempts to negotiate the trials of the twentieth century? What role did such rituals––“political religion” or otherwise––play in the legitimization of fascism, communism, and other forms of authoritarian politics before and after 1945? What influence did “supernatural” ideas and practices have in generating policies of ethnic cleansing, eugenics, and imperialism, or how can they been seen as a response to those policies? What were the differences East and West of the Iron Curtain after 1945? What are the implications in terms of class, gender, identity, and ethnicity?
Potential topics may include but are not limited to:
Occultism
“Pseudo-science” and parapsychology
Séances, spirit media, and communication with the dead
Dowsing
Faith healing
Astrology
Palm reading
Clairvoyance and prophecy
Ghost stories and apparitions
Witchcraft
Homeopathy
New Age
Exorcism
Vampires, werewolves and other monsters
“Pagan” religions
The horror genre, science fiction, and “fantastic” in film, art, and literature
If you are interested in contributing an abstract of not more than 500 words for consideration, please send it, along with your CV, to Monica Black (mblack9@utk.edu) and Eric Kurlander (ekurland@stetson.edu) by AUGUST 1, 2012.
MONSTROPHY: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF MONSTERS: PRETERNATURE call for papers
MONSTROPHY: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF MONSTERS: PRETERNATURE call for papers
“Preternature is a rigorously peer-reviewed interdisciplinary forum for original research that touches on the appearance of magic, prophecy, demonology, monstrophy, the occult, and related topics that stand in the liminal space between the natural world and the preternatural.
Preternature publishes scholarly articles, notes, and reviews covering all time periods and geographies, from a variety of academic approaches. As an English language publication, the Western tradition is inevitably an important focus, but the journal strongly encourages submissions covering cultural traditions worldwide.”
— Praeter paginam
Call for papers for Preternature, vol. 2, issue 2
Monstrophy: The Academic Study of Monster
Monsters have been widely catalogued in their historical and ethnographic contexts, and have been commonly included in cultural products such as epic, folktale, fiction, and film, but have only begun to be studied seriously as semiological markers indicating the seams of internal cultural tension. Interpreters commonly note the “monstrous” as occupying space at the borders of a society’s conceptual categories, such as those relating to sexual and behavioral transgression, or to inherent prejudice and internal conflict (for instance, in race, gender, politics, and religion). Monsters are rarely fully distinct from the “human,” but are often comprised of hybrid features of the human and non-human. This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore how the category of “monster” is used to define and articulate what a certain group of people articulates to itself to be properly human.
Contributions are welcome from any discipline, time period, or geographic provenance, so long as the discussion highlights the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the topic.
Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words (with the possibility of longer submissions in exceptional cases), including all documentation and critical apparatus. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing footnotes).
Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English.
Submissions are made online at:
Final Papers are due February 15, 2012
Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editor:
Kirsten C. Uszkalo: kirsten@uszkalo.com
Inquiries about book reviews should be sent to the Book Review Editor:
Richard Raiswell: rraiswell@upei.ca
For more on the journal, please consult <www.preternature.org>
