Call for Papers:
2011 AAR Meeting in San Francisco

The Psychology, Culture, & Religion (PCR) Group welcomes proposals on the following themes:

• The mourning of the American dream — psychological and religious dimensions of the economic malaise (for a possible cosponsored session with the Religion and the Social Sciences Section)
• Where is middle-earth (Medi-terranean)? Centrality, marginality, and intercultural dynamics in psychology and religion
• Primate studies and evolutionary psychology — what has religion got to do with it?

The Group also welcomes proposals on other themes dealing with psychology, culture, and religion.

Method of Proposal Submission:

• Online Paper/Panel Proposal System OP-3 ONLY
  Information on the AAR Website
• NOTE: Deadline for proposals is Monday, March 1, 2011

The Annual Meeting will take place November 19-November 22, 2011 in San Francisco, CA.

return to menu

News from PCR Members

Pam Cooper-White has returned from sabbatical to Columbia Theological Seminary, and is now Co-Director of the ThD program in Pastoral Counseling for the Atlanta Theological Association (Columbia, Emory/Candler and ITC).

Mary C. Moschella has recently taken a position as professor of pastoral care and counseling at Yale Divinity School.  She has been on leave with a Luce Fellowship to work on a study of “Joy in Pastoral Theology and Care.”

From Daniel Rancour-Laferriere:  “I have recently joined the AAR, as well as the PCR group.  Not yet having seen any postings to this list, I thought I would introduce myself.  I am Emeritus Professor of Russian at the University of California, Davis.  Some of my books and articles have been devoted to religious themes in Russian literature, history, art, and Russian Orthodox Christianity - all from a psychological/psychoanalytic perspective.  Having retired from Russian studies, I continue doing psychological research on Christian topics, most recently the Christian sign of the cross in history, from Golgotha to the Holocaust.  I am now also studying the perceived relationship of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the cross of Christ in light of the psychology of early childhood development. If others in the group are working on these or similar topics, it would be interesting to hear from them. http://Rancour-Laferriere.com

Matthias Beier writes: "I would like to share with you news of the occasion of my formal installation as Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care & Counseling at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where I began teaching last year. If you are interested, you can watch the sermon I gave during the installation service on Sept. 28 online at Youtube. The entire service is also available. A radio interview on my second book, Gott ohne Angst, which was published in Germany earlier this year, is now available as a podcast online (in German only). The book is currently being translated into English with a projected publication in English in 2011 or 2012.

return to menu

 

PCR up for renewal

The Psychology, Culture, and Religion Group is due to undertake its 5-year review this year. Luckily, the procedure has been simplified quite a lot. In 2009 the Program Committee decided that a program unit's self-review would suffice for renewal unless 1. we want a change in status (i.e., from Group to Section) – which we do not want at the moment; or 2. the Program Committee decides to appoint an external reviewer to provide more evidence for their decision making, on the basis of the self-report – which we definitely want to avoid.

Robert Puckett will give us more details about the renewal procedure this Spring. At the moment, we are already gathering some of the necessary material. Please help Kirk and me as chairs, and be so kind to send me by email a list of publications, lectures etc. which have resulted from presentations in PCR since 2005.

Hetty Zock, co-chair (t.h.zock@rug.nl)

 

return to menu

Other Calls for Papers

Some of the Calls for Papers from other Program Groups of the AAR and the SBL may be of interest to members of PCR. For further information, or to submit a paper, see the AAR or SBL websites.

Religion and the Social Sciences Section

This Section invites proposals on these topics:

• Who’s got next? — important new theorists in the social sciences that dissertation students should know about
• Empirical methods in religious studies — how the sociology of religion at the University of California, Berkeley, has advanced the study of religion
• The mourning of the American dream — the psychological and religious dimensions of the economic malaise (for a possible cosponsored session with the Psychology, Culture, and Religion Group)
• Current issues in qualitative approaches to the study of religion, communities of faith, and religious practices, including but not limited to researcher reflexivity and ways of accounting for the researcher’s self in the study of religious practices; the similarities and differences in various qualitative research practices such as participatory action research and ethnography by sociologists and by practical theologians; and issues stemming from research in cultural contexts of difference (for a possible cosponsored session with the Practical Theology Group)
• Other issues and questions in the study of religion and the social sciences

Cognitive Science of Religion Consultation

This Consultation welcomes proposals for papers or sessions on any aspect of the cognitive science of religion, although we would like at least one of our regular sessions to appeal to a broad audience. We would also like sessions that report on research that tests extant theories in the cognitive science of religion — scheduled either as a regular session or in our Research Forums, publicized to our e-mail list, and possibly cosponsored with The International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion. Papers are also invited on the following topics:

• Applying methods from cognitive science to historical materials
• Cognitive linguistics and religious thought (for a possible cosponsored session with the Society for Biblical Literature)
• Music and bodily movement (for a possible cosponsored session with the Tantric Studies Group)
• Game-theoretic models of religion

The Consultation’s blog describes how proposals are evaluated and can be used as a forum for coordinating organized sessions or Research Forums.

Practical Theology Group

This Group invites papers or panels in two areas:

• Current issues in qualitative approaches to the study of religion, communities of faith, and religious practices. Topics include, but are not limited to, researcher reflexivity and ways of accounting for the researcher’s self in the study of religious practices; similarities and differences in various qualitative research practices, such as participatory action research and ethnography by sociologists and by practical theologians; and issues stemming from research in cultural contexts of difference (for a possible cosponsored session with the Religion and the Social Sciences Section)
• Practical theology, economics, and class relations; in particular, joblessness, the phenomenon of “economic refugees,” and/or shifts in class identities; global economic instability and the reshaping of religious practices and communities; the economy of the academy, labor practices of the academy, and the lives of education workers; practical theology and the workplace; and labor/worker justice

SBL Psychology
and Biblical Studies Section

The Psychology and Biblical Studies section of the Society of Biblical Literature extends an invitation to PCR members to submit paper proposals for the Annual Meeting of the SBL, meeting concurrently with the AAR, November November 19-22, 2011 in San Francisco.

We invite paper proposals on the theme: "Psychology and the Bible: Working Beyond the Academy." What practical applications might be made of psychological understandings of the Bible in congregational settings, pastoral counseling, in community work? Or, what might a psychological understanding of the dynamics of interpretation have to say to the Academy? What might psychologically "healthy" biblical interpretation look like?

We also welcome proposals for papers that address Biblical texts, themes, figures and/or readers and interpreters using the concepts and interpretive tools of any named field of psychology.

We also plan to review two recent publications in the field: Bas van Os' Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus: Explorations in Understanding (T&T Clark, due February 2011), and Dereck Dashke and Andrew Kille, A Cry Instead of Justice: The Bible and Cultures of Violence in Psychological Perspective (T&T Clark, 2010).

See our website at www.psybibs.org or contact the Chair, D. Andrew Kille, at psybibs@psybibs.org. Paper proposals must be submitted by Tuesday, March 1, 2010.

 

return to menu

 

WECSOR - AAR/WR Annual Meeting 2011

WECSOR (Western Commission for the Study of Religion) is responsible for coordinating the annual meeting of the following academic research organizations: American Academy of Religion/Western Region Society for Biblical Literature/Pacific Coast Region American Schools of Oriental Research/Pacific SW Region.

Whittier College, Whittier, California
March 26-28, 2011

For Registration Information please go to the WECSOR page at AAR
(Or go to www.aarweb.org; Click on "Meetings"; Click on "Regional Meetings"; Scroll to "Western," and click to open).

You will find a link to the 2011 registration online form for the WECSOR 2011 conference. Unfortunately we are having technical problems with the WECSOR website. Every effort is being made to get the WECSOR website operational. Keep checking back to the WECSOR website; meantime please register using the above directions.

Susan M Maloney, Ph.D.
AAR/WR Regionally Elected Director

return to menu

 

Psychology, Religion, and Prepositions

A Letter from Ray Paloutzian to APA Division 36
(Psychology of Religion and Spirituality)

Dear Members of Division 36,

I am doing something rare for me -- to send a message to the whole listserv.  I do so for the good of the field of psychology of religion.   The important thing I have to say (with some hopefully recognizable humor tucked in there) is attached to this email.  The attachment is the Division 36 Newsletter, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring 2003.   Please read my article, pages 17-19.  I am brief in the body of this message.

The recent discussion about the name of this division is old, very old.  It existed the moment we became an official division of APA, January 1, 1976.  First named Psychologists Interested in Religious Issues (PIRI), the name debate went on and repeated and nonstop (with a few moments of relief from it) until the name was changed to Psychology of Religion under my presidency, 1992.  But even then, the throes and woes of the name issue, to which we have all recently been witness, and subject, went on, back and forth.  Should it be "of religion," "of religion and spirituality,", "and religion," "... and spirituality"? etc. etc.

My attached statement says what I said when I adopted as a professional goal, back in 1975, the task of moving scientific psychology on religion into the mainstream discipline of psychology as far as possible during my professional lifetime.  I am staggered, and humbled, by the incredible progress (i.e., success) of such movement in the time period from then to now.  I am also staggered and humbled that we have established only a platform, fairly solid and gaining in recognition and respect, on which to begin.  I said then and still think, strongly, that the basis for a decision about a name of this division ought to rest on only one consideration -- while, at the same time, we understand that there are other issues and that many members have diverse beliefs, preferences, agendas, styles, and ideals about it.  Thus: the bottom line question is, "What name will do the best job of continuing the excellent steps that have evolved over the past 1/3 century such that the mainstream discipline now takes this research topic seriously?" The answer to this question is the answer to the question of what to name this division, because unless psychology of religion research is taken seriously by the mainstream discipline, what might be done by those in this division will have little effect. 

The name "psychology of religion" is the best one to use because it is the most pragmatic (all variations and shades of grey understood), most effective for this specific, strategic, purpose.  It has gained respect as a science.   To mess with it would entail some undoing of past progress and would require retreading some past efforts that have brought this topic to its present good point.  For strategic, not purist or ideological, reasons, I do not think changing it is a good idea.  Let's stick with what has worked so very well for going on 20 years now.

--Ray

return to menu

 

Cross-Currents Invitation

Members of the PCR group are invited to apply for a fellowship to the CrossCurrents research colloquium to be held July 2011 here in New York.  Join a group of your peers and work on a research or writing project of your own design in a collaborative setting. The colloquium is uniquely interreligious and interdisciplinary, providing visiting scholar status at Columbia University, Union Seminary and Jewish Theological Seminary. For more information, please visit our website: www.crosscurents.org or email, Charles Henderson at colloquium@crosscurrents.org

Thanks so much for any assistance you may be able to provide,

Charles Henderson, Executive Editor
CrossCurrents

return to menu

 

Thanks to Our Members

Those who have paid dues for the `10-`11 year include: Bill Barnard; Matthias Beier; Kirk Bingaman; Kathleen Bishop; Lucy Bregman; Kelly Bulkeley; Lisa Cataldo; Pamela Cooper-White; Kathleen Greider; James W. Jones; Felicity Kelcourse; Joseph Kramp; Mary C. Moschella; Lallene Rector; Greg Schneider; Phillis Sheppard; Raynard Smith; Jessica Van Denend; Katherine R.K. Wiebe; and Hetty Zock.

Membership dues in PCR support resources for audio-visual equipment at the Annual Meeting. These costs, imposed by the host city hotels, have been increasing steadily over the past several years. Feel the warm glow of knowing that you're helping to enhance PCR sessions, subsidize grad students' attendance at the PCR dinner and to distribute PCR-related information to scholars, clinicians, and clergy members interested in our work.

$25.00 Regular Membership; $15.00 Student Membership (with copy of student ID). Checks should be payable to Psychology, Culture, & Religion Group. Send to: Kelly Bulkeley, Secretary/Treasurer, 226 Amherst Avenue, Kensington CA 94708; E-mail: kellybulkeley@earthlink.net

return to menu