Religion and Memory Unit

Communal Amnesia: Religion and the Politics of Forgetting

What do religious communities fail to remember? What are practitioners told to forget? Can forgetting serve as a religious practice? We invite papers or panels that explore the underside of memory studies–forgetting. We are interested in explorations of forgetting, religion, and memory across religious traditions, geographic contexts, and time (both contemporary and/or historical).

We also welcome papers, panels, and roundtables on other issues of religion and memory in any time period and any geographic context.

Remember the Struggle: Commemorating Sites of Freedom the World Over

With the Space, Place, and Religion Program Unit

With the conference’s theme being “Freedom,” and the conference’s location at an epicenter of the American Revolution, we invite papers that explore those spaces and places that commemorate struggles for freedom. Why have some places been preserved? Why have other spaces been forgotten? And what role has religion played in this process? Papers can consider any time, topic, and locale.

The Afterlives of Memory

With the Death and Dying Program Unit

How do we preserve the memories of those who are dying? How do we preserve the memories of the dead—both about the deceased and the memories they held? What happens when memory itself dies? And how are ghost stories and other “scary histories” of monsters or ghouls reflect a kind of haunting memory? We welcome papers and panels that examine the material culture and immaterial processes of the afterlives of memory, as well as theoretical studies reflections on what memory’s afterlives tell us about their social and political contexts.