2017 Annual Meeting Program (PDF)
Preliminary 2017 Annual Meeting Program (MS Word)
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The Moral Injury and Recovery in Religion, Society, and Culture Unit engages interdisciplinary study on moral injury, an emerging concept which attempts to engage the impact of making difficult moral choices under extreme conditions, experiencing morally anguishing events or duties, witnessing immoral acts, or behaving in ways that profoundly challenge moral conscience and identity and the values that support them.
In examining how understandings of recovery from moral injury might illuminate post-conflict situations in many areas of the world, this unit will interrogate how educating a wider public about moral injury might challenge the role of religion in supporting war and the militarization of international and intra-national conflicts, the effects of war on combatants in post-conflict societies, and more effective means for social support in recovery from moral injury.
Contributions are welcome engaging:
• diverse religious, cultural, and social systems and their sacred texts;
• neuroscientific approaches to ritual, moral formation, and the moral emotions;
• proposed methods for recovery, such as ritual, pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, arts, community life, narrative, and interreligious cooperation; and
• the roles of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, race, and other forms of oppression in relation to personal agency and theories of ethics.
• Spiritual practices of repair that address moral injury in individuals or communities, such as rituals adapted from religious resources or the use of traditional sacraments.
• (Re)Defining Moral Injury: Intersectional approaches that engage and revise definitions of moral injury as a concept used in different disciplines and social contexts.
• Twenty-five Years of Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery
To honor the twenty-fifth anniversary of Judith Herman's landmark book, Trauma and Recovery: the aftermath of violence - from domestic abuse to political terror, we invite papers that explore the impact of Herman's insights and theory on current clinical practices, religious and theological understandings, and/or psychological treatments for trauma survivors and systems of violence. The session will include a response by the author. Co-sponsored with Psychology, Culture, and Religion Unit.
• The moral injury implications of teaching ethics within institutional contexts which deny, subvert, or fail to address sexual assault and other systems of harm.
Other related proposals are always welcome.