Call for Proposals

Open Call

The Midwest American Academy of Religion seeks papers, panels, and other modes of scholarly presentation that engage the academic study of religion, theology, scripture studies, or related fields; public understandings of religion; and pedagogical practices in the study of religion and/or academic theology. The Midwest AAR has more than a dozen sections organized around areas of study, theories and methods, biblical literatures and languages, and special topics in the study of religion. We are especially interested in papers and panels that enrich these sections through relevant scholarship and/or critique. 

As a regional meeting, the Midwest AAR is committed to providing professionalization and networking opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, contingent and adjunct faculty, independent scholars, post-doctoral fellows, professionals in a range of industries whose work engages the academic study of religion, as well as tenure-line and tenured faculty. We encourage individual paper and panel proposals from all these groups (and any not listed).

The 2025 meeting will be welcoming members of the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts (SCRIPT), so this year we especially welcome papers looking at material culture and the lives of objects. 

The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2024. We will have additional conference space available for fall semester undergraduate work, so students or professors wishing to submit single or group undergraduate work that comes in during the fall semester but after the deadline are encouraged to email MAAR President Jenny Caplan (caplanjr@ucmail.uc.edu) as soon as possible with those proposals.

Please note: Papers that wish to be considered for the graduate student paper prize, the religion and ecology paper prize, or the undergraduate paper prize MUST be submitted two weeks before the conference. Only conference papers will be considered for prizes, not seminar papers from which conference talks are being drawn. A separate form will be emailed to all participants for the submission of papers to be considered for prizes. Prizes will be awarded at the plenary meeting at the conference.