March 29 2024

Eastern International Region

2019 Eastern International Regional Meeting

April 13–14, 2019
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2019 Call for Papers

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: February 1, 2019

The Eastern International Region of the AAR invites you to submit proposals for papers and panels to be presented at the 2019 Regional Meeting. Alongside the regular panels, the conference will include a series of special sessions on the theme, “Religion in Harm and Healing.” We invite critical reflection on what it means when religious traditions are used to make sense of harm and/or healing, or when religion itself is understood as responsible for harm and/or healing.

Proposals are welcome in all areas within the study of religion, including:

Trauma theory
Medical Ethics
Diaspora and transnational studies
Gender studies
History
Anthropology

Method and Theory
Philosophy
Psychology
Religion and politics
Sociology
Textual Studies

The EIR will once again meet concurrently with SCRIPT (the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts). Proposals for SCRIPT papers should respond to its call for papers at www.script-site.net. We are also delighted this year to be running concurrently with McGill’s History/Islamic Studies conference “Angelical Conjunctions: Crossroads of Medicine and Religion, 1200–1800” as well as McGill-CREOR’s graduate student conference, which will focus this year on religion and healing.

Alongside individual paper proposals, the Program Committee also welcomes proposals for nontraditional sessions, such as roundtables, dialogues, book discussions, etc.

Each proposal should contain the following in a single e-mail attachment in MS Word format:

  • One-page abstract (300 words maximum) describing the nature of the paper or panel
  • Cover page that includes the submitter’s full name, title, institution, status at the institution (undergraduate, graduate student, faculty, staff, etc.), phone number, fax number, e-mail, and mailing address.
  • For panel proposals, identify the primary contact person

Please send your proposal to eiraarsubmission@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2019.

Scholars from any region may apply to participate. Only those proposals received by the deadline will be considered for inclusion in the program. Presentations are limited to twenty minutes, with ten minutes allowed for questions. If you require technological support for your presentation/panel (such as an internet connection or audio and projection equipment), you must request it with your proposal.

As a general rule, the Region discourages panels comprised of scholars from a single institution. Exceptions to this rule would include a presentation from a research team or a panel based on other types of collaborative research.

Undergraduates

The Region welcomes submissions from undergraduates in the field of religious studies. We plan to schedule sessions for shorter undergraduate papers of 15 minutes each. Each proposal should contain the following in a single e-mail attachment in Word format:

  • One-page abstract (300 words maximum) describing the nature of the paper or panel
  • Letter from a faculty member who has supervised the student’s work
  • Cover page that includes the student’s full name, institution, phone number, e-mail, and mailing address. For panel proposals, identify the contact person

Please send your proposal to eiraarsubmission@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2019.

Note: All presenters at the 2019 regional conference with the exception of undergraduates must have active membership in the AAR or the SBL. All participants must register for the conference.

Student Paper Competition

Graduate and undergraduate students in the Eastern International Region are invited to enter the student paper competition. Please note that to be eligible for submission, the student must attend a university in the Eastern International Region. The committee will give preference to work that is new at this conference. The winning award(s) will be formally presented at the business meeting on Sunday, April 14, 2019.

To enter the competition, please include a line in your proposal indicating that you wish to enter your paper into the Student Paper Competition and submit by the February 1, 2019 deadline. A final draft of the paper is due to the EIR Regional Coordinator Cynthia Hogan (chogan@ithaca.edu) by April 1, 2019. To be eligible for this award the student must read the entire paper at the meeting, which means the paper and presentation must conform to the twenty-minute time limit (= roughly 2,500 words) or 15-minutes for undergraduate papers (roughly 2,000 words).