[PHILOS-L] Conference CFP: Phenomenology, Religious Experience, and Spiritual Practices - Fordham University

[Alex Riedel]

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June 15-18, 2025 at Fordham University, Bronx, New York, USA

Plenary Speakers: Hent de Vries (New York University, NY, USA), Sarah Hammerschlag (University of Chicago, IL, USA), Anthony J. Godzieba (Villanova University, PA, USA)

See https://sites.google.com/view/phenomreligiousspiritpract2025/home for the Conference website!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Spiritual practices are central to practically all religious traditions. They often serve as a pathway to religious experience, a way to prepare oneself for revelation or illumination by the divine. Religious practices can shape a self that is open to revelation and thus able to experience the transcendent. Liturgical and ritual practices provide patterns of communal gathering that prepare participants for shared prayer and celebration. Sacramental practices communicate the holy by purifying, feeding, and sanctifying. Rites of repentance and forgiveness enable the processing of failure and guilt. Devotional practices open the self to hearing the divine voice. Ascetic practices sharpen the focus on repentance in the combat with passions and distracting thoughts. Regardless of tradition, personal and communal religious practices—often deeply affective and corporeal—direct, guide, shape, and transform people to be open to the holy other and the human (and nonhuman) neighbor.

The conference “Phenomenology, Religious Experience, and Spiritual Practices” seeks to explore these ritual, devotional, or ascetic practices that orient people to the divine and enable them to receive revelation. We invite paper proposals that explore any of the following (or closely related) questions:

• What is the relationship between divine revelation and human religious practices? Can one prepare for revelation?

• How do liturgical and sacramental practices shape human religious experience? Do they have essential characteristics or patterns that are crucial to their functioning?

• What is the goal and nature of ascetic practices? What are their essential ingredients and goals?

• Can one prepare for mystical experience or is it always a gift given wholly gratuitously?

• What is the relationship between personal devotional practices and communal ways of worship?

• What is the role of phenomenology in examining religious practices? What concrete resources does phenomenology have to offer in examining the religious or spiritual life?

• What is the role of the body and/or affect in religious experience and its various practices?

• How are material culture and various objects of devotion (such as icons, prayer ropes, candles, etc.) involved in religious experience? What role do they play in receptivity for revelation?

• Paper proposals on other topics/questions explicitly related to the conference theme are also welcome.

Please note that we are happy to consider proposals that explicitly engage the conference theme. We seek to foster vibrant dialogue and flourishing conversation on the topic, which is best enabled by papers that grapple with the proposed—or closely related—questions in substantive fashion.

Proposals are to be sent by October 15, 2024 to gschwa...@fordham.edu in the following format:

• The body of the email should contain your full name (as you wish for it to appear on the program), institutional affiliation, title of proposed paper, and preferred email address.

• An attachment (PDF or Word document) to the email should contain the proposal itself (500-750 words) without any identifying information, suitable for blind review.

Applicants will be contacted by mid-November 2024 with decisions regarding acceptance of the paper.

Contact gschwa...@fordham.edu for more information.

Organized by: Christina M. Gschwandtner (Fordham University, NY, USA) and Thomas Schärtl-Trendel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany)

Sponsored by: Fordham University, New York and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich

Funded by: Templeton Religion Trust, “Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology, University of St. Andrews

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