Dr. Ambre DromGoole - the 2024 Implicit Religion US Keynote

Dr. Ambre Dromgoole, Cornell University, 2023  Provost's New Faculty Fellow (starting in July 2024 as Assistant Professor), Africana Studies,  will deliver:
"Live On Forever: Curating a Post-Mortem Mythos"

Registration

The public is welcome to join us online for the opening of the conference and  Dr. Dromgoole's Keynote address, beginning at 10:00 am CST, Wednesday June 5. Registration is free of charge.
Register Through TicketSource

Intensive Concerns - Implicit Religion US 2024 Theme

Implicit Religion observes human behaviour through commitment, integrating foci &intensive concerns with extensive effects. The conference this year takes as its theme Intensive Concerns, the first part of the third axiom.

Intensive Concerns are the issues, causes and goals that arise within an individual, community, institution or even nation as a direct result of what they are most committed to (Bailey, 1997; Stewart, 2017; Stewart, 2022). Intensive Concerns may be inclusive, positivistic, benign, exclusive, aspirational, negative, excluding or dangerous, but they are never neutral because of the intensity at which they occur. They can also be a combination of the same, either intentionally or unwittingly. For example, Abdulrahman notes how the intensive concerns about postcolonial education and the social landscape in Nigeria leads to tensions and exclusions between children who undertake ‘modern’ schooling perceived as ‘ideal’ and those who undertake traditional Qur’anic schooling considered retrograde and outdated (2022).

For those of us who study ‘religion’ in its various forms and experiences deemed religious (Taves, 2009) the consideration of intensive concerns is a potential minefield of information and insight into religion as a facet of human behaviour and experience. For example, Dromgoole argues that “there is in fact only one Aretha Franklin who is the sum of several social and spiritual worlds that inspired her artistic interpretations and that those in her lineage are not homogenous representations but share in her multitudes” (2022). Such a nuanced insight into the intensive concerns of Black female gospel performers and singers’ sheds light on how they experienced, understood and constructed religion and experiences deemed religious into their lives, work and communities. Paying attention to intensive concerns can help us do better research and explore the role of music, sound, the body, language, performance, artwork, fandom, agency and others can come from, create or be shaped by religion or experiences deemed religious. Intensive concerns can also help us to examine religion and experiences deemed religious through larger social constructions such as white supremacy, nationalism, climate crisis, animal human interaction, identity, education and human rights.

Presenters are invited to submit abstracts for consideration on the theme of “Intensive Concerns”. These might include but are not limited to:

• The impact and importance of intensive concerns within a religious community and/ or community shaped around (an) experience(s) deemed religious.
• The use of everyday objects and patterns to shape, express, explain or control intensive concerns (eg, food based rituals, consumption, commerce, tattooing, clothing, shrines, etc)
• The role of music and / or sound in creating, sustaining or resisting intensive concerns within religious communities and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.
• The role of capitalism in creating, sustaining or resisting intensive concerns within religious communities and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.
• The role of popular culture in creating, sustaining or resisting intensive concerns within religious communities and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.
• Intensive concerns and the role of religion or experiences deemed religious in the lives of disabled people.
• Climate change / crisis focused intensive concerns.
• Intensive concerns and social construction(s), eg racism, white supremacy, nationalism, migration, refugee experiences, Indigeneity, Identity, Human animal interaction, and disability.  
• ‍ Intensive concerns in relation to Trans rights, LGBT identities and rights, and their impact or importance to religious communities and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.
• Intensive concerns in relation to Critical Race Theory and their impact or importance upon religious communities and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.
• The role of intensive concerns in teaching and educating about religion and / or communities shaped by experience(s) deemed religious.

References

Abdulrahman, Hadiza Kere. 2022, “Teaching to Inform, Form and Transform: Pedagogical Responses of An(other) Way of Knowing – The Almajiranci System of Northern Nigeria.” Pedagogical Responsiveness in Complex Contexts, Issues of Transformation, Inclusion and Equity (pp.151-164)

Bailey, Edward. 1997, Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Leuven: Peeters

Dromgoogle, Ambre. 2022, “I’m Gonna Dedicate This One to Miss Franklin”: Afro-Protestant Performance Pedagogies and Rethinking the Black Woman’s Spiritual Voice. Journal of Popular Music Studies (2022) 34 (4): 19–38.

Taves, Ann. 2009, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton University Press

Stewart, Francis. 2022, Implicit religion: reshaping the boundary between the religious and the secular?, Journal of Beliefs & Values, 43:1, 1-14

Stewart, Francis. 2017, Punk Rock is my Religion: Straight Edge Punk and ‘Religious’ Identity. Routledge