Religions in the Latina/o Americas Unit
Religions in the Latina/o Americas invites proposals for individual papers and pre-arranged panels on any topic related to the interdisciplinary study of religion in Latin America and Latine/x religion in North America. We invite critical engagements with this year's theme on "future/s" especially with regards to the field as a professional activity. As we navigate an era of unprecedented uncertainty (marked by the precarity of the academic labor market, the shrinking of humanities departments, and the global crises of democracy) our scholarly community stands at a crossroads. For our contingent faculty, graduate students, and those forging para-academic paths, the "future" is not an abstract concept but a site of profound vulnerability. Yet, Latin American religious traditions have long been laboratories for "futuring" amidst crisis. From indigenous cosmologies that resist the "end of the world" to prophetic traditions that demand the kingdom of God on earth, the region offers a rich tapestry of imagination that refuses both easy despair and superficial hope.
Members of our unit are particularly interested in:
- Decolonial Futurities: How do Indigenous and Afro-Latin American traditions challenge Western linear notions of "the future"?
- Prophetic Imaginations: Revisiting Liberation Theology, Pentecostal utopianism, and grassroots movements that utilize religious rhetoric to demand radical socio-political shifts.
- Dystopia and Resistance: Critical assessments of how religious groups navigate authoritarianism, violence, and the "muscle of dystopic imagination" in contemporary Latin American politics.
- Materializing Hope: The role of aesthetics, art, film, and digital media in "enfleshing" religious futures. How do material practices make the imagined "future" tangible today?
- Global detention and displacement: How do religious actors and displaced persons navigate the "carceral landscapes" of modern borders? We invite papers on the "affectual potentials" of religious care in detention centers, the role of faith-based sanctuary networks, and how "spiritual citizenship" allows displaced communities to reclaim agency and imagine a future beyond the cage.
Emerging Scholars Session
Each year we try to dedicate one panel to emerging scholars, which includes advanced graduate students and recent PhDs who work in our field. Please do not hesitate to submit your work to our unit even if it is early in its development or exploratory; we provide a critical but encouraging environment for the professional development of early career scholars.
This Unit fosters interdisciplinary and theoretically innovative analyses of Latina/o and Latin American religiosities and spiritualities in the Americas. We explore the richness and diversity of religious traditions in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, highlighting the complex and often explosive relations between religion and politics in the region, the centrality of religion in the Americas since pre-Conquest times, and the global significance of religious events and lived religion in the region. Our goal is to advance knowledge and ways of knowing that expand traditional areas of religious studies throughout the Americas, mindful of transnational and global realities. Thus, we encourage studies that explore non-Western beliefs and practices, including the indigenous, the African diasporic, Buddhist, and Islamic, as well as those that advance more complex understanding of culturally hybrid Christianities. We encourage feminist- and queer-centered perspectives as well as thought rooted in community experience. Diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives are highlighted in presentation of this scholarship.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Justin Doran | jmdoran@middlebury.edu | - | View |