[Air-L] CFP: Social Media, Religion, and Culture edited Volume

[Dheepa Sundaram]

Hi AOIR friends!

Apologies for cross-posting. Please see the below CFP for an edited volume titled Social Media, Religion, and Culture (under contract with Routledge Press)

Social Media, Religion, and Culture
Call for Papers

Editors:
Dheepa Sundaram, University of Denver (dheepa.sundaram at du.edu)
Cindy Tekobbe, University of Illinois-Chicago (ctek at uic.edu)

Timeline:
Submit a 300-word abstract and title by Dec 16, 2024. Also include name and affiliation (if any). Submit Proposals here: https://forms.gle/kqMWtHwBnN3Xd6ef7
Selected authors will be notified by January 10, 2025.
4000 word essays should be submitted to authors by July 31, 2025. Peer-review of chapters is available upon request.
Full CFP and Description of the Volume: https://www.smrce.org/social-media-religion-and-culture-open-access

Overview:
Social media platforms are the modern public square, supporting and fostering publics and counterpublics (Castells 1996; Warner 2001). Networked counter/publics, as social technologies (Marres 2017), both reflect analog spaces and provide digital contact between ideologies, religious practices, political thought, and cultures. This volume delves into the cultural production apparatus of social media (Bourdieu 1983; Baym 2010). It also builds on earlier work on social media, religion, and digital culture, including conceptualizations of internet religion (Cowan and Hadden 2000; Basher, 2004; Hoover, 2006), religion, media, and branding (Einstein 2007) and digital religion and new media (Helland, 2002; Campbell, 2010, 2013), digital rituals and games (Wagner 2013; Campbell and Grieve (2014), religious authority online (Hoover 2016) and more recently, digital religion and third space (Echchaibi and Hoover 2023).

Digital cultural studies and new media have progressed to consider how identity and intersectional politics impact digital spaces such as histories and imaginaries of software (Chun 2013); race, media, technology (Nakamura 2000, 2002, 2007, 2011; Browne 2015; Benjamin 2019a; Noble 2018; Buolawini 2023), digital iterations of gender and sexuality (O’Riordan and Phillips 2007; Cardenas 2022) and internet activism, social justice networks, and digital surveillance (Jackson, Bailey, and Welles 2020; Benjamin 2019b, 2024, Browne 2024).

We are seeking contributions for our volume on social media, religion, and culture, with a focus on scholars/scholarship of the global south. This volume seeks to bring together “religion” and “culture” as broad, discursive fields within social media specifically and digital platforms more generally to understand how publics, communities, and meaning-making mechanisms are formed, how they interact with the analog world, and how the affordances of social media enable new iterative aspects of canon, praxis, and affinity. In this sense, “religion” includes institutional and non-institutional spiritual, devotional, and canonical traditions and beliefs, as well as, more broadly, the communities of practice that form in social media spaces. We engage the term “culture” to mean the affinities that form within social media spaces, which include narratives of belonging, spiritual connections, activism, political imagination, shared histories and stories, traditional teachings of identity, and other practices that serve to knit together communities.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

The role of AI in cultural production and/or religious identity
AI, technosalvationism, and/or technolibertarianism
AI, capitalism, and culture
AI, labor, and religion
Religion/Culture, brands, and social media
Religion/Culture, identity, and social networks, platform moderation
Religion, ethnonationalism, and social media
Digital hate cultures and social media
LGBTQIA+ activism, religion, and social media; particular interest in Transgender communities, identities, solidarities, activism and social media
Black religions, cultures, and social networks
Areligious, agnosticism, atheism, and “nones” and social media
Race/Racialization, religion/culture, and social networking
Anti-caste activism, publics, social networks, and solidarities
Islamophobia and social networks
Indigenous sacred spaces, rituals, communities and social networks
Religious traditions, rituals, cultural practices, identities, communities, publics, and social networks.
Religious affinity groups on social media platforms
Social media, fascist politics, religion/culture
Religion, environmentalism, identity and social media
Intersections of social media and democracy
Social media, memes, and identity
Social media activism and affinity groups
Social media, Indigenous cultures and communities, and identity
Publics, counterpublics, and micropublics on social media
Social media devotional publics and networks
Global gurus and cultural influencers
Meaning-making mechanisms and social media
Social media cultural production
Intersections between social media, religion, and capitalism
Social media art and activism
Digital canons and social media
Social media and political religion
Indigenous art, social media platforms, and commerce
Virality, social media, and cultural movements

Please contact Dheepa Sundaram (dheepa.sundaram at du.edu) and Cindy Tekobbe (ctek at uic.edu) with any questions. We look forward to receiving your proposals!

Thank you!

With best wishes,
Dheepa and Cindy

Dheepa Sundaram, PhD (she/her/hers)<https://www.mypronouns.org/>
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Affiliate Faculty-IRISE
Affiliate Faculty-Gender and Women's Studies
Sturm Hall 269
303.871.2888
University of Denver
Cheyenne and Arapaho Territories
Co-chair, North American Hinduism Unit, American Academy of Religion
Website: g<http://digitaldarsanparty.com/>lobalizingdharma.com<http://lobalizingdharma.com/>
Twitter: @themodsisyphus