From: Sociology of Religion <SOCREL@PROTECTED> on behalf of "Page, Sarah-Jane" <s.page1@PROTECTED>
Reply-To: "Page, Sarah-Jane" <s.page1@PROTECTED>
Date: Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 1:19 PM
To: <SOCREL@PROTECTED>
Subject: CFP: Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence

Religion and Gender Journal

Calls for Manuscripts for Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence

Description

The journal Religion and Gender invites article proposals for a special issue on Religion, Gender and Violence. The relationship between religion and violence is highly contested and has come under considerable scrutiny by scholars of religion.  Less understood is the relationship between gender, religion and violence and this special issue aims to contribute to understandings of the ways in which religion intersects with institutional, familial and public gendered violence as explored through current research via an interdisciplinary lens.

With the current roll out of public inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse across Ireland, England and Wales, Scotland, Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is clear that at a global level, it is religious organizations that have had the most widespread and highest levels of abuse against children with characteristically poor institutional responses to victims and their families. Public inquires have clearly established that religious organizations made strategic decisions to limit reputational damage at the cost of child safety and the implications of this for religious institutions is yet to be fully understood.

Violence against women and children in domestic settings where religion is a significant factor has also been the subject of ongoing and recent research indicating that there are specific issues at play for women and children in experiencing and reporting abuse and how it is managed by faith traditions. In important public debates on the status of gender diversity and difference, for example the marriage equality issue, there have been forceful responses to vulnerable cohorts from religious leaders, in social media and religious publications.

At the same time, there has been an important counter discourse articulated by religious groups around building religious and social capital that contributes to a pluralist understanding of the value of multi-religious societies and gender diversity. These discourses, most often articulated by more liberal religious groups but also increasingly by mainstream faith traditions, utilize the language of social justice and theological interpretation to construct narratives of gender inclusion and equity. This brings faith traditions into conflict within themselves over the framing of gender relations for the new century.

For this special issue, we invite manuscripts that address this convergence from a variety of perspectives on the function and meaning of gender, religion and violence and its counter-discourses.

The editors are particularly interested in receiving manuscripts that showcase empirical research that address, but are not limited to, the following areas and/or questions:

• What role does gendered violence play in mainstream religious groups re maintenance of the faith tradition?
• How are the impacts and experiences of gendered violence managed by religious organisations with regard to pastoral care and processes of remediation?
• Who are the victims of gendered violence in religious organisations?
• In what ways can feminist theory and theology contribute to and expand understandings of religion, gender and violence?
• What role does non-religion and/or secularity play in relation to responding to and managing the disclosure of violence in religious organisations.
• How well do public inquiries address gendered religious violence and what are the impacts on religious organisations with respect to particular case studies?

Submissions should be between 5000 and 8000 words in length (including abstract, footnotes and references). See Brill’s page for further information on submitting an article https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/rag-overview.xml . Affiliation and email address should be supplied in the first submission. In order to guarantee a blind review process, all submissions should be anonymized with the name of and references to the author removed from the text. We are happy to receive inquiries about prospective submissions.

Please send all queries to the special issues editors:

Kathleen McPhillips, University of Newcastle, Australia

Email: Kathleen.mcphillips@PROTECTED

Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Email: s.page1@PROTECTED

SUBMISSION DATES

15 January 2020: Abstract Submission

15 August 2020: Full manuscript submission