The NSRN announces the publication of a new Events Report by Christopher R. Cotter (NSRN), Rebecca Aechtner (University of Edinburgh) and Johannes Quack (McGill University) on the “Non-Religiosity, Identity, and Ritual” Panel Session at the 2011 annual conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), “New Movements in Religion” (September 18-22, 2011).

Please see the details and link to the document below:

Non-Religiosity, Identity, and Ritual Panel Session
Hungarian Culture Foundation, Budapest, Hungary
Report by Christopher R. Cotter (NSRN), Rebecca Aechtner (University of Edinburgh) & Johannes Quack (McGill University)
Published by the NSRN, 18 April 2012

The Anthropology students of Goldsmiths University College welcome you to have  a public conference being held on Monday 12 March, 2012 and Monday 19 March 2012

The panels are as follows:

12 March

Atheism, Land Reborn and Secular Missionaries

19 March

Violence, Nationalism and Empathy

The panels are a result of a new addition to the Anthropology Syllabus – Ideology and Secularism a course for 3rd Year BA students.

Part of the Negotiating Religion series, this workshop will investigate the spatial incorporation of religious communities in the city both in the form of the material urban environment, for example in the presence of religious buildings and other faith spaces, and in  everyday urban cultures, practices and politics.

Questions which will be explored in this workshop include: How are new religious buildings incorporated into contemporary urban spaces? What continuities are there with the emergence of religious architecture in earlier times? What significance do religious buildings and other markers in the urban landscape have for different religious communities? How are existing and new forms of religious spatial practice (processions, festivals, pilgrimage) incorporated into the urban environment? What kinds of transformations of urban space are produced by religious spatial practices? What role do faith groups play in the making and remaking of urban spaces?

PROGRAMME:

Convener:
Dr Claire Dwyer (UCL Geography)

For further information on the individual sessions or the series as a whole, please contact: Dr François Guesnet or Dr Uta Staiger.

‘Death in modern Scotland, 1855-1955: beliefs, attitudes and practices’

New College, University of Edinburgh, Friday 1 February 2013 – Saturday 3 February, 2013.

‘There remains a huge agenda for death research, offering a unique vantage point for the study of Scottish history’ (Professor Elaine McFarland of Glasgow Metropolitan University, 2004). Since those words were written, there have been increasing signs of interest, research and publications in death studies in Scotland.

This conference invites those who are researching death from whatever disciplinary perspective to offer papers whose total range will illuminate one hundred years of death in modern Scotland. These hundred years began with the passing of the Registration Act and the Burial Grounds (Scotland) Act in 1855 and end with the opening of Daldowie Crematorium in 1955.

Plenary speakers include:

Professor Elaine McFarland, Dr Elizabeth Cumming and Professor Hilary J. Grainger.

Papers will be particularly welcome on the subjects of:

• death, grief and mourning;
• funeral rites and rituals; customs and costume;
• demographic and statistical interpretations; registration of death;
• public health and medicine;
• death, poverty, gender and social class
• death, urban and rural comparisons
• burial and cremation;
• the development of funeral directing services;
• theology, liturgy and funeral ministry;
• monuments and memorialisation;
• issues of architecture and landscape design;
• the folklore of death; ghost narratives and beliefs; spiritualism;
• death in war-time;
• death, grief, mourning;
• death in literature and the arts;
• death and Scottish law;
• violent death; the death penalty;
• disasters: air, rail, sea and industrial;

Established research and work-in-progress welcomed.

Abstracts of 200 words maximum may be sent to Peter C. Jupp, Braddan House, High Street, Duddington, Stamford, Lincs PE9 3QE email peterc.jupp@btinternet.com or peter.c.jupp@ed.ac.uk

A follow-up call for papers with full conference details and names of plenary speakers will be published soon.

Revd Dr Peter C. Jupp,

Honorary Fellow,

Department of Divinity,

University of Edinburgh, UK.

There were some issues with the link for this this article, but this has now been resolved, link here

The Council for Secular Humanists has published a paper by Frank L. Pasquale, titled “The Social Science of Secularity”

Following a failure of irreligious studies to get off the ground in 1971, the purposeful study of the non-religious has again attempted flight and seems to be rocketing, as a subject in its own right, as much NSRN work can attest. This is a fact championed by Pasquale who gives the NSRN a good write up as an “innovative organisation”.

Pasquale gives a useful overview of the breadth of current research and the genesis of organisations such as the NSRN and CAR (Center for Atheist Research). He pays particular attention to key areas needing serious consideration from researchers, including the thorny issue of terminology, accurate description and characterisation. Other key areas include  health, pluralisation of world-views and all “will increasingly need to direct attention to the vast and apparently growing mass of “seculous,” “religular,” or “fuzzy” types in between”.