Korean Religions Unit

The Korean Religions Unit welcomes proposals for paper sessions, roundtable sessions, and individual papers. Proposals in all areas of Korean Religions will be considered. This year, we especially invite submissions to the subtopics proposed by interested AAR members, as listed below. If you would like to contribute to one of the panel proposals below, please contact the organizer(s) directly, and submit your proposal at least two weeks prior to the AAR submission deadline which will be on March 1, 2025, 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Prophets or Perpetrators? The Role of Korean Religions in Systems of Oppression and Liberation.

Organizer: Shinjae Lee (leeaqj@bc.edu)

How have religious leaders, movements, and communities in Korea navigated the tangled web of justice and injustice? From revolutionary uprisings to quiet acts of defiance, from reinforcing power structures to challenging them, Korean religious traditions have left indelible marks on the moral fabric of society. The Korean Religions Unit invites you to delve into the theme: Prophets or Perpetrators? The Role of Korean Religions in Systems of Oppression and Liberation. We seek bold, creative, and interdisciplinary explorations that uncover how Korean religions—past and present, local and diasporic—have resisted, perpetuated, or ignored oppression while shaping societal struggles and aspirations for justice. What insights do these traditions reveal about suffering and liberation? What tensions arise when religious leadership, movements, or beliefs confront the world’s inequities? We encourage interdisciplinary and comparative approaches, including theological, sociological, historical, anthropological, and literary analyses. Proposals can engage with Buddhist reforms, shamanistic rituals, Confucian ethics, Christian activism, or new religious movements.

Assessing Recent Scholarship about Korean Religions  

Organizer: Timothy Lee (t.lee@tcu.edu)

The panel seeks to review how Korean religions have been studied in English over the past twenty-five years. Multiple monographs, edited volumes, and sourcebooks on Korean religions have been published in this period. The time is ripe for us to take stock of these works and review how Korean religions have been studied in English since the turn of the twenty-first century. In this vein, we invite proposals in which the author makes the case as to why certain scholars and their works are significant for understanding one of the main traditions of Korean religions: shamanism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or new religions and proposals in which the author assesses works that treat a particular religious dimension—e.g., ritual, emotion (experience), myth (narrative), doctrine (beliefs), ethics (law), social (institution), and material—as it has been manifested in two or more Korean religious traditions.

Co-sponsored panel with the Japanese Religions Unit

East Asian Self-Cultivation Practices in Transnational Perspective 

Organizer: Justin Stein: (justin.stein@kpu.ca) 

Practices of self-cultivation 修養 (xiuyang, suyang, shūyō) / 修身 (xiushen, susin, shūshin) have a long history within East Asian religion, medicine, education, and arts (especially martial arts), as a means to foster perfection of the self, physical health, moral development, and social harmony. These practices often emphasize qi / ki  氣 — the basic “stuff” of existence, often understood as a life force — as a vehicle for harmonizing the individual body-mind with universal principles and cosmic forces. While these self-cultivation practices evoke and invoke East Asian homelands, and have long circulated across intra-regional borders, they also circulate in wide-reaching transnational currents, including in Asian diasporas and in the so-called New Age movement, interacting with forces like race, orientalism, and empire. This panel invites scholars who are interested in a conversation regarding the use of the concept of “self-cultivation” in dialogue with the categories of “religion,” “(East) Asia,” and/or “Asian American” to discuss its utility for the field of religious studies, and explore its potential evolution as a concept and discipline.  

Any other papers that address the relationship between society, culture, and religion as broadly construed can be submitted directly through the AAR portal. Other inquiries can be directed to Sean Kim ckim@ucmo.edu, or Liora Sarfati lsarfati@tauex.tau.ac.il. In submitting proposals, please follow the AAR guidelines carefully.