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Lauren Turek Presbyterian Conference, Chicago, 1871 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division I have come across several CFPs recently for conferences on topics pertaining to U.S. foreign relations or international affairs that include specific requests for papers on religion or aspects of American religious history. I have included the full descriptions and CFPs for these opportunities that may be of interest to readers of this blog, with particularly relevant potential topic areas in bold, after the break. The 9/11 Legacy “History is Not Was, History Is” Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and New York University Location/Date : National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, June 15-16, 2017 CFP Deadline: April 1, 2017 Description:  This conference to be held at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on the former World Trade Center site will explore the broader legacy of 9/11. We seek pan...

Emily Suzanne Clark Calling all American religion scholars! Calling all friends of the blog! Calling all Humanities professors! I request the teaching expertise of our readers.  The beloved Boom's Taxonomy (image from Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching ) Starting next academic year I will be the Director of Undergraduate Majors for the Religious Studies department at Gonzaga University . (Is there a patron saint of college curricula? If so, pray for me .) We've also been having conversations about redesigning our major and minor in Religious Studies, in part because the core curriculum of the University has changed and because it's good to revisit these things regularly. Part of our conversation has centered on how to cap the major; in other words, what should the senior seminar or capstone class look like? We currently do a senior thesis and are trying to better scaffold it into the program. We recently introduced a junior seminar for majors to prepare them for that seni...

[Good morning! This month the Cushwa Center has invited James Strasburg and Jonathan Riddle to post a preview of the upcoming conference " Enduring Trends and New Directions: A Conference on the History of American Christianity In Honor of Mark Noll ." Strasburg and Riddle  are the co-chairs of Mark Noll's retirement conference and are also PhD candidates at the University of Notre Dame working under Noll's direction. Below the jump, their post includes information about the (free!) conference, as well as a brief interview with Noll himself. Hope to see you there!] James Strasburg and Jonathan Riddle (with special interview guest Mark Noll) At the end of the 2015-2016 academic year, Mark Noll retired from the University of Notre Dame. The end of his tenure as professor marks the end of era. To mark the occasion, this spring the University of Notre Dame will host a conference on the history of American Christianity in Noll’s honor, entitled “Enduring Trends and New D...

Elesha Coffman As part of my research on Margaret Mead, I've been reading a stunning book with the totally 1971 title  A Rap on Race . The book is the transcript of a series of conversations between Mead and James Baldwin, touching on race, religion, politics, culture, and more. In honor of the new movie I Am Not Your Negro , the audio has been posted on YouTube . The blog "Brain Pickings" features several sets of quotations, including this one on religion . I'm finding it equally thrilling and disturbing how current the conversation sounds, with its warnings about urban violence, the collapse of a sense of community, the perils of unchecked consumption, and persistent tensions surrounding immigration. Here's a portion that reminded me of Ross Douthat's Feb. 4 New York Times column , in which Douthat wondered how those who praise the Great White Men of U.S. history and those who seek to bury them might ever share a vision of America. Mead: Well we still think...

Karen Johnson As readers of my posts may discern, I am very interested in questions concerning where people live out their lives, how they live in those places, and the consequences of both.   Housing segregation plays a prominent role in my book project on Catholic civil rights activism (hopefully to be in print in about 18 months!).   In the past year and a half, I've had the opportunity to read widely and think further about the connections between places, religion, and race.   I'd like to share some of my thoughts, and welcome your feedback , as I explore not only Catholicism, place and race, but evangelicalism, place, and race as well . American society is one in which places have been replaced by space, which has led to a culture of homelessness.*   Homelessness is often conceived as a problem plaguing the poor and marginalized who stay in shelters or live on the streets.   Yet homelessness also includes the affluent who have few ties to a particular pla...

Adam Park  The season of romance is upon us. Or, at least, a day of romance. And by some accounts, Christians romance best. So, what's their secret? Well, it can be found in their rich material culture. Since the early 2000s, Christian marital aid and lingerie websites have been providing the adventurous faithful a wide range of romantic accessories. From nipple clamps, sex swings, and penis rings to edible underwear, prostate massagers, and beads (that you don't wear around your neck), these online marital aid ministries offer many earthly delights for holy matrimony. A most fleshly doxa, indeed. The raison d'être for online Christian marital aid ministries, however, is not merely to aid in the enhancement of romance. Such ministries exist to provide, in the words of one website, "a safe, non-pornographic place to shop for all your Christian sex toy and romance needs, while keeping Christ at the center of your marriage." When it comes to Christian marriage, pleas...

Jonathan Den Hartog I had hoped to find a way to connect a blog post this morning to football events over the week-end. The connections this year were not as clear as in previous years . So, the best I can do is--"If you're thinking about the New England Patriots for good or ill, think about about the Original Patriots!" And, I won't even limit that to the New England variety. Rather than digging into a full review today, I want to offer a notice of a book I'm working through. This past month I've enjoyed reading Daniel Dreisbach's Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers . Although other books already exist on the subject, it's an effective measure of how significant the Bible was in public debate during the founding era that yet another interpretation is justified. Dreisbach is humble enough to delineate what he is not claiming while still making broad claims for the Biblical text influencing the discussion around the American Revolution and the n...