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Call For Presentations
First Annual Union Seminary Quarterly Review Graduate Students’ Conference
Conference Theme: The Future of Liberation Theology
Friday, February 24th, 2012 at Union Theological Seminary, New York City
Presentation Proposals due December 1. Accepted presentations to be published in essay form in the Union Seminary Quarterly Review. Limited travel and lodging assistance is available based on need.
Evening Plenary Panel: Professors Andrea Smith, Eboni Marshall, Ivan Petrella, Patrick Cheng, and more respond to and engage student presentations and community conversations of the day.
Goal of Conference:
The aim of this interdisciplinary graduate student conference is to imagine and explore the future of liberation theology and related liberationist discourses over the course of a one-day graduate conference at Union Theological Seminary, which has served as a location from which many liberationist projects have emerged over the past 40 years. This conference seeks to combine the voices of graduate students working in theology, ethics, scripture, philosophy, religious studies, homiletics as well as other disciplines with the voices of professional academics of multiple generations who contribute to liberationist discourses. In an effort to document this collaborative discussion, the Union Seminary Quarterly Review will publish student and professor presentations, as well as other documents from the conference.
Summary of Problematic:
Liberation theology and related discourses are frequently spoken of in the past tense. This is apparent despite the ongoing proliferation of liberationist projects within and outside the religious academy, and also the continued existence of the impetus for past liberation theologies—the material suffering of persons and nature under human social systems. How might the varied liberationist projects of the past inform contemporary efforts within and outside the academy to confront the various crises humans face today? How, if at all, has the context for engaging such crises changed since the advent of liberation theology? What is at the root of the shift away from liberation theology in the religious academy? In what ways might contemporary discourses on culture, society and the psyche inform contemporary liberationist projects? How do liberation theologies of the past and present inform religious scholarship as a whole? What is the future of liberation theology?
Presentation Proposals:
Doctoral students from any discipline are welcome to submit proposals for 20 minute conference presentations in the following format:
Proposal Guidelines:
• Personal contact information and institutional affiliation(s)
• A brief biography or abridged one-page CV
• A 500 to 1000 word abstract of a proposed presentation/paper (the proposed presentation/paper does not need to be completed prior to submitting this proposal).
• Any technical requests such as audio/visual equipment
These proposals as well as any questions can be sent to usqr@uts.columbia.edu.
General Presentation Categories:
(These are just suggestions to inspire proposal ideas. Proposals are not required to fit into one of these):
• Queer theory/theology
• Race in the age of Obama
• Borderlands
• Liberating interreligiously
• Philosophy/philosophy of religion
• Secularism/post-secularism
• Globalization and economics
• Media and popular culture
• Arab Spring/Occupy Wall Street
• Marxism, critical theory and liberation theology
• James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree
• Environmental crisis
• Feminism and womanism
• Post-colonialism
• Missiology
• Evangelical and Pentecostal liberationist perspectives
• Liberation theology and academia
• Pacifism
• Psychoanalysis and theories of the self/personal liberation and liberation theology
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