Religions, Medicines, and Healing Unit
The Religions, Medicines, and Healing Unit welcomes paper and/or panel proposals that explore specific intersections of religious and other healing traditions and practices. Proposals should address the social context of the topic, as well as theoretical and analytical frameworks, such as how this analysis helps us to understand religions, medicine, and healing in new ways. For 2025, we welcome any proposal that addresses our goals, and we have a particular interest in the following themes:
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"Freedom By Another Name: Medicine & Healing in the Era of Slavery," Co-sponsored by the Afro-American Religious History Unit, Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit, and the African Diaspora Religions Unit.
This panel is open to a variety of submissions, including analyses of the use of plant medicines, prayers, divination, laying of hands, ritual baths, and sacred ceremonies used for healing purposes among African descendants in the era of slavery. We welcome studies of slavery in Africa and/or the African Diaspora. We also invite proposals that examine how Western medicine was weaponized as an extension of colonial power to further control Black people and keep their bodies in bondage. We are especially interested in proposals that address how enslaved people experienced harrowing conditions of enslavement, faced immense challenges of illness and physical suffering, but also sought freedom and empowerment through the sustained practice of African traditional healing rites.
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"Healing & Religion in the Digital Era",
Co-sponsored by the Religion, Media & Culture UnitHow do religious or spiritual healing discourses and practices evolve amidst new technologies, digitality, and the (mis)information era? How is religious authority and expertise in health and medicine re-evaluated within online spaces? We welcome analyses of illness, affliction, and suffering across religious traditions, geographic regions, and forms of new media. We are particularly interested in how fractured identities, political divides, structural violence, and/or colonialism impact the affliction and healing of social bodies through material and/or digital spaces.
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"Public Policy, Religion, and Healing"
Co-Sponsored by the Bioethics and Religion UnitThis panel will examine the dynamic relationships between individual freedom and collective responsibility in the context of public health and health policy. We invite proposals that explore the intersections of religion, healing, and public policy, with a focus on the tensions between government interventions and individual autonomy. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, we particularly welcome papers that examine the complex dynamics between individual reproductive justice and government interventions, exploring the broader implications for autonomy and public policy. We also invite contributions that investigate how religious beliefs and practices shape sexual and reproductive health policies, including their impacts on intimate partner violence and harm. We are especially interested in work that explores collective efforts to advocate for freedom in the face of structural barriers. Additionally, this panel seeks papers that critically analyze theories of health promotion and autonomy within public health initiatives, as well as religious exemptions to public health mandates. We encourage submissions from diverse methodological approaches, including public health, theology, religious studies, sociology, political science, and bioethics.
Graduate Student Award
Graduate students are the future of our profession and contribute substantially to the success of the Religions, Medicines, and Healing Unit by delivering papers based on original research. Through the RMH Graduate Student Paper Award, we recognize this contribution and encourage outstanding research by students. Papers will be evaluated for their originality, appropriate use of sources, and the quality of writing. Eligible students must:
- be actively enrolled in a doctoral program and pursuing a research topic in any discipline related to Religions, Medicines, and Healing;
- have had a paper accepted by the RMH Unit for presentation at the 2024 Annual Meeting;
- have indicated when submitting their proposal that they are applying for the award. Further instructions will be emailed after proposal acceptance.
The Religions, Medicines, and Healing Unit is committed to the value of diversity, equity, and social justice in our standards of excellence. For pre-arranged panels, we especially welcome proposals that reflect diversity of gender, ethnicity, race, field, method, and scholarly rank and directly address such within the proposal.
The study of religions, medicines, and healing is a growing field within religious studies that draws on the disciplines and scholarship of history, anthropology (particularly medical anthropology), phenomenology, psychology, sociology, ethnic studies, ritual studies, gender studies, theology, political and economic theory, public health, bioscientific epidemiology, history of science, comparative religion, and other interdisciplinary approaches to interpret meanings assigned to illness, affliction, and suffering; healing, health, and well-being; healing systems and traditions, their interactions, and the factors that influence them; and related topics and issues. As a broad area of inquiry, this field incorporates diverse theoretical orientations and methodological strategies in order to develop theories and methods specific to the study of illness, health, healing, and associated social relations from religious studies perspectives. Although religious texts serve as important resources in this endeavor, so do the many approaches to the study of lived religion, religious embodiment and material culture, and popular expressions of religiosity. Finally, like its sister field of medical anthropology, the field of religions, medicines, and healing encourages examination of how affliction and healing affect social bodies through fractured identities, political divides, structural violence, and colonialism. We support the work of graduate students, religion scholars, scholar-activists, and scholars in allied fields. We promote collaboration with other interdisciplinary Program Units and those focused on particular traditions and/or regions.