On the Edge Symposium 2027

Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society
福利亚洲国产精品 (NC)
Feb. 18-20, 2027

福利亚洲国产精品鈥檚 鈥淥n the Edge鈥 symposium, hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society (CSRCS), explores new directions in the interdisciplinary study of religion. This bi-annual symposium brings together scholars working at the theoretical and methodological boundaries of those fields that have a stake in the critical analysis of religion鈥攍aw, history, psychology, anthropology, literature/textual studies, philosophy, art history, political science, classics, sociology, geography, folklore, and gender studies, to name a few. 鈥淥n the Edge鈥 aims to exercise a self-conscious attention to methodological advances that can be made through interdisciplinarity. Its proceedings contribute to a richly contextualized and multi-layered understanding of the role of religion in societies past, present, and future.

2027 Symposium: Digital and Spatial Approaches to the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society

Many early trailblazers of the Digital Humanities believed that storing, preserving, and presenting humanities data and scholarship online would democratize the humanities and social science research by broadening our audiences and transforming the ways that we conveyed and published it. Since then, many exciting digital projects have worked with communities, museums,聽archives, and interdisciplinary teams to organize and聽disseminate聽their research, and scholars often聽negotiate ethical collaborations with users, their collaborators, and the public.

This conference will take stock of how researchers have applied digital tools and spatial analysis to the study of religion, culture, and society. We are especially interested in the ways that these technologies bridge and expand methods and approaches聽for聽collaborating聽with聽localized communities.

We welcome proposals for papers on all aspects of digital and/or spatial approaches聽from fields such as (but not limited to) religious studies, history, geography, art history, Native and聽Indigenous聽studies, literature, archaeology, computer science, library and information science, area studies, communication, economics, sociology, classical studies, linguistics, and anthropology.

Topics might include:聽

  • Computational, digital, or spatial approaches to research and pedagogy
  • Tools, methods, and infrastructures
  • Community Histories (oral history, history harvests)
  • Digital media (art, literature, history, music, film, and games, etc.)
  • Space/place
  • Activism
  • Digital objects and cultures
  • Resource creation, curation, and engagement

We also welcome聽proposals for workshops聽that聽demonstrate聽accessible聽digital聽and/or聽spatial approaches.

We invite scholars from different academic fields and at different stages of their careers to submit their abstracts by September 15, 2026聽using the form from the lefthand menu.

We are able to cover two nights of lodging and some meals during the symposium. Limited travel subventions may be available for some presenters upon application. Presenters are expected to circulate papers in advance of the conference with the understanding that select papers will be invited to be revised and submitted for publication as an edited volume or special issues of an appropriate journal.

Elon faculty conveners

Evan Gatti, Professor of Art History

Ryan Kirk, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies

Amanda Kleintop, Assistant Professor of History

Sandy Marshall, Associate Professor of Geography

For further information, please contact Brian K. Pennington, Director of the Elon Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society and Professor of Religious Studies