Men, Masculinities, and Religions Unit

The Men, Masculinities, and Religion seeks panel proposals and experimental panels that use short, or creative presentation formats. We are particularly interested in roundtables, and brief remarks and provocations that open up conversation between panelists and audience members, and/or presentations that creatively use and present objects, media, art, music, sounds etc. We encourage proposals of full panels/roundtables and paper proposals on the following topics:

• Fatherhood

  We invite presentations and panels that consider themes of fatherhood, parenting, family planning, and intergenerational relationships and how they are shaped by religious practices and identities. 
   

• Beyond Hegemonic Masculinity

  MMR invites papers and/or full-panel proposals that envision and propose new starting points—methodological, theoretical, geographic, reflexive etc.—for studying religious masculinities. How might we revisit, remix, and re-envision our tools and frameworks for studying men and masculinities? 
   

• The New Idols: Lightning Session
  Across pop culture and the political spectrum, who are contemporary “idols” of masculinity? From tech CEOs and AI magnates, to pop stars and political up-and-comers, who are the current and emerging “masculine” icons or disruptors? And what do these figures and their iconographies, ideologies, and platforms reveal about our moment and our futures? For this topic, we envision a lightning session with short papers and provocations, around 7 minutes. Because of the shorter format, we request only brief proposals/abstracts of ~200-300 words rather than full-length proposals. 

   

• Additional possible themes include: death, technology, transhumanism, and apocalypticism.