Eat, Sleep and Breathe Religion

Eat, Sleep and Breathe Religion

Graduate Student Symposium - Centre for the Study of Religion University of Toronto Friday, 27 March, 2009

*Call for Papers *

This year’s Graduate Symposium extends a cordial call for papers investigating the interaction between religion and the so-called necessities of life. This year’s theme has been selected to encourage interdisciplinary participation.

Physiological and psychological needs play a key role in religious ceremonies, and are integral to religious beliefs and in religious institutions. Once these needs have been met, however, the necessities of life, both the physical (food, air, sleep, shelter) and the psychological, are often overlooked in favour of an emphasis on less corporeal needs such as the spiritual or aesthetic. For the most part, but with obvious exceptions, such psychological and physiological needs are reasonably well satisfied in the modern West, thus the organizers of this symposium seek to explore the context of religion and the necessities of life as either ‘satisfied’ or ‘unsatisfied’ and as ‘primary’ or ‘secondary’ concerns.

We welcome abstracts that place these questions in the contexts of anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, political science, psychology and sociology as well as those which extend the subject across historical and geographical boundaries.

Topics: The following sub-fields have been designed so as to allow for flexibility of interpretation when considering what constitutes a 'necessity of life' as well as to encourage applications reflecting a broad spectrum of interests and disciplines. We gladly welcome applications which fall outside of these tentative parameters:

- religion and the dream/sleep
- religion and procreation
- religion and physical space
- religion and eating/food
- religion and shelter
- religion and mental health

Proposals for twenty minute presentations should not exceed 250 words and should be submitted to rebekka.king@utoronto.ca by Friday, February 13th, 2009. Please include any technology requests.