Graduate Student Conference at Claremont: Call for Papers
“May These Principles Be Establishedâ€: Mormonism in the Political Arena
The balance between church and state has always been a lively and sometimes contentious issue, even, and perhaps especially, in the United States, a country with long-declared freedom of religion. From the time of Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, through the tumultuous integration of Utah into the wider American political body and up to the present day in which Mormons dot the political landscape, Mormonism has sought to define its relationship to the body politic. In the process, it has raised issues ranging from theocracy to the place of private beliefs in public policy creation.
In order to explore these issues, the Claremont Mormon Studies Student Association (CMSSA) invites all interested graduate students to a conference addressing the theme of Mormonism in the political arena. The conference will be held March 28-29April 18-19, 2008 at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Papers from all social scientific and humanities disciplines are welcomed, as this topic invites exploration from many perspectives, individual, organizational, historical, contemporary, theological, ethical and even international. Similar conferences on additional topics relevant to Mormon Studies are expected to be held biennially.
Paper proposals should be emailed to [email protected] by January 15, 2008 (see proposal information below). Completed papers should be no more than 2,500 words long so as to allow ample opportunity for discussion. Those whose papers are accepted for presentation will be notified by the first week of February 2008. Travel subsidies will be available on a competitive basis.
Paper proposals should include the following:
Name
Mailing Address
Contact Information (phone, email)
School Attending
Major Area of Study
Brief Paper Abstract
For more details, please visit our website: http://rsc.cgu.edu/cmssa/
well not yet in grad school yet but sound fun.
It’s unfortunate that they chose the same weekend as the SMPT conference at the University of Utah.
I like how they present the theme of Mormonism trying to define itself in relation to politics. In the buzz surrounding the Romney campaign, the main questions seem to been about how America feels about Mormons in politics. The Church itself, of course, seems to have been trying very hard to be completely apolitical. But members are involved in the political life of their communities and nations, and need to work out how their faith bears on this.
Just a heads up that there is a good chance that the date of this conference will be changing to April 18-19, so that we can avoid the scheduling conflict. Stay tuned for final confirmation on that.
Thanks, Richard. That would be helpful to both organizations.
I’m not sure how I got signed on as “anon+,” but I am neither anonymous nor +. Comment #5 was mine.
[Editor: fixed].
So, it’s official. The date of this conference has been changed to April 18-19, 2008. Hopefully “the powers that be” can edit the call for papers above accordingly. If you could add in something like “NOTE CHANGED DATE” somewhere, that would be great.