Foucault and the Study of Religion Seminar

The Foucault and the Study of Religion Seminar is dedicated to collaborative research in a public setting, gathering scholars of religion whose research engages theoretical and historical approaches to the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault's work has been transformative for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences over the last fifty years. We aim to continue Foucault’s tradition of public intellectual discourse in a way that illuminates the importance of the study of religion for understanding and critiquing his work on questions of gender, race, sexuality, and class. We hope to convene scholars of various religious practices and traditions to expand Foucault’s critical approach and enliven the contributions of this research for the public domain.

We understand this work to be ongoing, developing the complex questions that emerge from Foucault’s analytics of power, knowledge, and subjectivity central to many disciplines. The 2018 posthumous publication of his History of Sexuality volume on early Christian sexual ethics (Confessions of the Flesh) foregrounds the need for such critical and constructive engagement by scholars with expertise across religious traditions and methodologies. We hope to bring together scholars within the AAR and SBL—particularly those in philosophy of religion, queer theory, black studies, feminist theory, religion and literature, diasporic studies, affect studies, African American religion, religion and ecology, and the histories of differing religious traditions (ancient and early modern)—in order to pursue work that is historically and theoretically rigorous, reflecting Foucault’s own interdisciplinarity and the relevance his work has had across fields.

For our 2026 meetings, we seek papers that engage the work of Foucault and religious studies in ways that take up both historical and philosophical themes, while speaking to the range of contemporary challenges that we collectively face. As this year celebrates the 100th anniversary of Foucault's birth, papers that engage the century of Foucault are also very welcome. All proposals will be carefully considered, but we are especially interested in work that touches on the following themes: 

• Foucault's intellectual prehistory and foundations, including but not limited to the role of traditions of the history and philosophy of science in France, historical epistemology, psychoanalysis, and traditions with a more mixed or absent role in traditional stories of Foucault's intellectual, political, and indeed spiritual formation.
• Conversion: themes of conversion, especially the concept of political conversion, are of particular interest to the seminar. Papers that build on Foucault's work to analyze conversion in political, religious, and spiritual forms are very much welcome, as well as papers engaging Foucault's reading and use of texts on conversion from Christian and other religious sources, to the influence of Pierre Hadot's crucial work in this area.
• Archeology as a method unique from genealogy, especially papers that pose methodological questions around archeology in its own terms and within its own methodological concerns.
• The body: analyses of and from Foucault related to the role of the body, especially in providing a foundation for political, philosophical, and spiritual analyses, are welcome
• Friendship: we are especially interested in papers that take up the question of friendship, including the politics of friendship in challenging times, on its own terms, but also in conversation with questions of solidarity, difference, the care of self and other, and political-spiritual exercises and transformation. 
• Dreams: the recent translation and publication of Foucault's early work on Binswager raise numerous questions on both dreams in general and Foucault's early engagement with psychological theory
• Foucault and affect theory/emotions
• Foucault and ecology, animals, and the relationship with nonhuman animals, including everything from relations of power to friendship and solidarity.
• Critical terms and theories in Foucault and critical theory more broadly