Class, Labor, and Religion Unit

Proposals in response to the calls below should clearly indicate how the paper foregrounds issues of class, labor, or workers (while recognizing their intersections with other dimensions of inequality) and/or how consideration of class inequalities and dynamics shapes the paper's analysis or conclusions.

General Call: We invite paper or panel proposals that explore the role of class, labor, or worker issues in religious communities and traditions or the significance of class, labor, or worker issues in the study of religion and theology or address major questions in the study of class, labor, or workers. While open to any proposals relevant to these, the following are some broad themes that are especially generative for our conversations: 

• Reproductive labor(s) and/or the relationships between economic production and reproductive labor;
• Relationships between exploitation of labor and ecological destruction;
• Forces (e.g., racism, neocolonialism) that obstruct or undermine solidarity among diverse workers or solidarity between working-class and middle-class people;
• Capitalism as a religion;
• Cooperative economy or cooperative movements (both religiously and non-religiously affiliated). 

Special Emphasis: Religion and Labor in South Asia
We invite paper proposals that examine religion and labor in South Asia, which may (but do not have to) be in conversation with Shankar Ramaswami's Souls in the Kalyug: The Politics and Cosmologies of Migrant Workers in Contemporary India (Penn Press, 2025).

Co-Sponsored Session with the AI and Religion Unit: For a possible co-sponsored session with the AI and Religion Unit, we invite papers that consider the implications and impacts of artificial intelligence on workers, labor, and/or class from the perspective of religion/theology/ethics. For example, religious/ theological/ ethical analyses of how AI has transformed labor processes or displaced workers; of class inequalities related to AI; of workers' responses to AI; or of AI itself as a worker.

Co-Sponsored Session with the Teaching Religion Unit and Religion, Media, and Culture Unit — The FUTURE of Teaching and Learning: Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom
With the Teaching Religion Unit and the Religion, Media, and Culture Unit, we invite proposals for a possible co-sponsored session. We hope to facilitate discussions that:

• Analyze and/or demonstrate innovative teaching methods/styles using various A.I.-answer engines – per past experience or future teaching plans.
• Evaluate any obstacles that arise when A.I. enters the religious studies classroom. Potential concerns include plagiarism convenience, threats to academic integrity, “hallucination,” inaccuracy, and bias deficiencies, “homogenized” thought, and compromises to student attention and effort.
• Address the future of academic labor as related to AI: how our work as educators is being affected by both changes to the university and AI. How does the growing movement towards teaching, grading, and writing using AI tools affect our work? How might it further implicate us and our students in unjust labor and environmental impact?