Religious Reflections on Friendship Seminar

The Religious Reflections on Friendship Seminar invites proposals for papers and panel presentations that address the intersection of religion/s and friendship from any scholarly perspective and religious tradition. We welcome papers that broaden contemporary perspectives on friendship and challenge dominant perspectives on friendship, as they bring friendship and religion into dialogue with contemporary issues, needs, and challenges. Our focus in 2022 will be most specifically on the study of friendship from inter-religious/inter-faith perspectives. The following themes, amongst others, may be engaged from the perspective of two or more religious traditions:
• Friendship within religious texts and/or historic time periods
• Theological and/or mystical perspectives on friendship
• Friendship and religious/theological ethics
• Civic friendship and the common good
• Friendship-informed pedagogies for the teaching of inter-religious/inter-faith studies

Echoing 2022’s presidential theme “Religion and Catastrophe” we also invite papers that consider the role of friendship practices and inter-faith dialogue in times of crisis, and in the envisioning of alternative ways of life in the face of climate change.

The seminar seeks collaborative and multidisciplinary research, including through historical, ethnographic, theological, political, psychological, and ethical frameworks. Typically, seminar participants pre-circulate papers and come to the seminar’s Annual Meeting session ready to discuss the substance of each paper and the thematic connections and tensions that emerge between them. This allows for more conversation and deeper reflection at the conference. For this purpose, papers should be submitted to co-chairs for pre-circulation by October 15.