Call for Papers 2021

The schools of Divinity and Environment at Yale University invite you to the fifth annual Graduate Conference in Religion and Ecology.

Ecological Placemaking Amidst Crises: Formation, Resilience, and Leadership, the theme of this year’s conference, hopes to inspire participants to consider how different manifestations of place—its ecology, people, and built environment—dynamically interact and present the possibility for hope or peril amidst crises. Our understanding of our place within vast ecosystems—as cultivators or destructive agents—will shape our collective future.

We encourage applications from graduate students and other rising voices in the fields of Religious Studies, Law & Policy, Philosophy, History, Environmental Studies, Gender and Race Studies, Art History and from other fields whose work orbits this year’s conference topic.

In addition to traditional conference papers, we also invite creative projects and presentations to constitute this year’s program. We especially encourage applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds to apply, and encourage interdisciplinary work across these topics to reflect the aims of this conference.

Possible topics of interest include:

1. Formation, education, and liturgy of persons and communities towards adaptive resilience amidst multiple crises (climate change, COVID-19, racial injustice)
2. Community building and conflict within and across divides (political, religious, ethnic, geographic, racial, national, etc.)
3. Knowing and living in place; Indigenous knowledge, environmental injustice, knowledge of the land, place/earth-based spirituality, local ecology, activism
4. Spiritual leadership for hurting, healing, and rebuilding communities
5. Legacies and opportunities to embrace or reframe religious/spiritual conceptions of the natural world (sacred texts, interfaith relations, exegesis/interpretation)