Digital Religion Conference
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The Natural History of the Digital Religion Conference
(includes the final conference program, plenary presentations and other features)
The Center for Media, Religion and Culture held its international conference: Digital Religion at the University of Colorado at Boulder on January 12-15, 2012. The conference brought together scholars of media and religion and producers of digital religion content from a variety of religious traditions to reflect on the implications of new media on religious practice and meaning-making in modern society. Invited speakers included: Jeremy Stolow, Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Montréal, Heidi Campbell, Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, Religion Dispatches and Jason Anthony from Time Inc.
The International Conference on
Digital Religion
January 12-15, 2012
The Center for Media, Religion and Culture
University of Colorado-Boulder
‘Digital Religion” today includes a myriad of examples: an evangelical mommy blogging community, a Jewish online dating service, a virtual pilgrimage of the Muslim ritual of Hajj, offering Poojas on an online Hindu Temple service, a YouTube series of an ex-Catholic nun, the invention of Kosher phones, playing “Al-Quraysh”, a Muslim video game, an Anglican Church on Second Life, or a religious iPhone app like iTalk to God. What is striking about the proliferation of this digital religious culture is not only the creative adoption of new technologies, but also the challenges and possibilities these technologies offer for religious meaning-making in modern society. Both individuals and religious institutions today vigorously appropriate interactive forms of media generating new religious deliberative spaces, religious publics and counterpublics, and competing sources of authority, and collapsing in the process old boundaries of what constitutes the religious realm.
This international conference will bring together scholars of media and religion and producers of digital religion content from a variety of religious traditions to reflect on the implications of these developments. Papers and panels may address, but should not be limited to questions such as:
- Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of digital religion
- Relationships between offline and online forms of religious practice
- The emergence of networked religious communities
- The cultivation of authority and legitimacy in digital religious spaces
- Digitization of religion and the implications for scriptural text dissemination and reception
- Mediatization of religion in digital spaces
- Technological mediation and religious authenticity
- Representations of religion in digital platforms
- Intersections of religion and the market
- Influence on the religious public sphere
- Questions of mundane, “banal” or “implicit” religion
- Digital religious transnationalism
- Religious aesthetics and sensations in digital forms
- Religions and spiritualities in social networking
- Generational and demographic difference and issues
Please send a 300-word abstract by June 15, 2011 to MediaReligion@Colorado.EDU
Invited speakers include:
-Jeremy Stolow, Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Montréal
-Heidi Campbell, Department of Communication at Texas A&M University
-Religion Dispatches, an online magazine dedicated to the analysis and understanding of contemporary religion.
-Jason Anthony, Senior editor at Time Inc. and an expert on religion and gaming.
For further information and comments please contact Stewart Hoover at stewart.hoover@colorado.edu or Nabil Echchaibi at nabil.echchaibi@colorado.edu
A detailed conference Website will be available shortly at http://cmrc.colorado.edu/
