“El
milagro de San Toribio Romo,” by María Palacios. Photo by Consuelo Velasco Montoya
Call for Proposals
Claremont Graduate University and the
Red de Investigadores del Fenómeno Religioso en México
(Network of Religion Researchers
in Mexico)
Invite thematic papers session proposals for the Twentieth Annual
Meeting of Rifrem to be held, May 31, June 1 and 2, 2017 at Claremont Graduate University
(Claremont, California, USA):
Religion and migration in greater Mexico
Background
discussion
The long-held expectation for religion’s eclipse in the shadow of an
encroaching and totalizing secularized modernity has faltered in the face of
the phenomenon’s resiliency and diversification. In the case of Mexico,
resilient and renewed indigenous religious traditions, resilient and new cults
of saints, an expanded pluralism (including growing rates of non-Catholic and
non-religious adscription), and perennial, new, and intensified public
protagonism over definitions of marriage and the family continue to invite
focused and comparative scholarly research in a country that is comprised of 32
federated entities, many distinct regions, that registers 62 spoken indigenous
languages, and that has a complicated history of Church-State relations.
Scholars are challenged to precisely analyze moving targets of popular
religiosity in variegated social, economic, political, ethnic, and geographical
contexts.
The premier forum for scholarly exchange concerning these and other
topics has been the annual meetings of the Red
de Investigadores del Fenómeno Religioso en México – RIFREM (Network of
Religion Researchers of Mexico). Over the course of the past two decades,
members of this flagship association have produced an impressive body of
scholarship in monographs, edited books, journal articles, documentaries, etc.
They have also served as expert interlocutors for determining methodologies and
categories in the federal Census, and have produced the most authoritative
surveys of religion in Mexico. Given Mexico’s proximity to the United States,
Central America, and the imbrication of religious, ethnic, and migratory
phenomena, RIFREM scholars have also studied religious phenomena in “greater”
Mexico (México de Afuera), examining the transnational dimensions of religious
practice and identity in old and new circuits of labor migration, among Central
American migrants, and within indigenous communities of origin, settlement, and
return. The geographical dispersion has occurred in tandem with a growing
awareness of the contingency of established analytical rubrics and categories imported
from the global North; thus, RIFREM has also served as a productive site for
the re-thinking of theoretical and methodological questions in transnational
contexts.
Claremont Graduate University is
pleased to announce that it will serve as the host of the Red de Investigadores del Fenómeno Religioso en México’s Twentieth
Annual Meeting, to be held May 31 through June 2, 2017, on CGU’s Claremont,
California campus (forty miles east of Los Angeles, the second largest city of
Mexican-origin population). This historic gathering in southern California
represents a valuable opportunity for continued scholarly exchange between
scholarly guilds in both countries and elsewhere in Latin America. (In 2006,
RIFREM celebrated its tenth annual meeting at Arizona State University.) It
also marks CGU’s institutional shift in the direction of research and teaching
in Latino and Latin American religions.
Religion and Migration in Greater
Mexico
This fortuitous institutional and scholarly convergence suggests an organizing
theme for RIFREM’s Twentieth Annual Meeting: Religion and Migration in Greater Mexico. Indeed, as noted, the
theme reflects ongoing scholarly interest within RIFREM in, for example, the
transnational growth and agency of such religious minorities as Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Pentecostals, and in indigenous
communities’ transnational activism against neoliberal processes and their
defense of traditional ways (usos y costumbres). Importantly, the theme affords
an opportunity for a ninety-year critical retrospective on the uneven fate of
the religion variable in migration studies. Notably, the foundational study
(1926-1929) undertaken by anthropologist Manuel Gamio, queried deeply the
question of religious practice and belief among Mexican immigrants in the
United States. The Life Story of the
Mexican Immigrant (University of Chicago, 1931) wove the religion thread
throughout the myriad histories of the study’s subjects, while the more
analytical volume, Mexican Immigration to
the United States (University of Chicago, 1930) included a chapter on
religion. The variable also captured the attention of Gamio translator and
collaborator Robert Redfield. Similarly, the incipient field of sociology at
the University of Southern California sought to map the religious field of
Mexican Los Angeles; the several theses overseen by Emory Bogardus even managed
to capture traces of an emerging Pentecostalism. The religion variable’s
eclipse in subsequent scholarship on Mexican migration is understandable in
light of prevailing disciplinary constraints and ideological assumptions in
early Chicano/Latino Studies. The last decade of research, however, has cast
new light on the intersection of religion and migration, drawing attention to the
persistence and portability of religious identities and practices among
migrating populations and migration-tied communities. To take just one example,
the axis that runs from Oaxaca state’s Tehuantepec Isthmus through Mexico City
to western Sinaloa and northwestern Baja California states and from there to
California and Oregon represents an identifiable corridor of new labor
migration (since 1960), “Oaxacalifornia”, whose geographic and chronological
parameters (versus the more diffuse migration and settlement patterns of
earlier Mexican migration waves) present opportunities for manageable and
focused research on religion and migration. The study of religious
transnationalism can assess, among other things: the influence of technology
and media; the catalytic and reinforcing role of monetary and symbolic
(religious) remittances and the agency of migrants in communities of origin;
the relative weight of missionary strategies vs. migrant tactics; power
relations between transnationally tied congregations; and the potential of U.S.
Latino congregations and parishes to serve as alternative public squares for a
population that has been increasingly criminalized and pushed out of the public
arena and public institutions of the U.S., and, alternatively, to serve as
incubators of social and political leadership to be leveraged and exercised in
communities of origin in Mexico. Clearly, religion continues to matter in
“greater” Mexico, in the borderlands, and in the alternative public spaces
shaped and inhabited by subaltern actors, spaces within which they articulate
notions of cultural citizenship. Indeed, recent historical scholarship has
illumined this, demonstrating the longstanding force and impact of Mexican
religious actors, history, and developments on Mexican American communities
during the long course of the twentieth century (e.g., exilic Cristero prelates
and priests in San Antonio and Los Angeles; transnational Protestant ministers;
Pentecostal borderlands solidarity and culture; cooperative episcopal structures,
Chicano and Central American appropriations of Mesoamerican motifs, and, of
course, intra-ethnic tensions). According to recent surveys, 23% of U.S.
church-goers are Roman Catholic; Latinos constitute 40% of Catholics, and are
highly represented within the Charismatic Renewal. Of the 153 million (52%)
Protestants in the U.S., 7% (10 million) are Latinos, with Puerto Rican and
Central American-origin populations demonstrating significantly higher
Pentecostal rates than Mexican-origin ones.
Call for Thematic Papers Sessions
The meeting organizers invite proposals for thematic papers sessions
(around the organizing theme and other themes), which will then form the basis
for a subsequent call for individual papers. The following list of possible
topics is not an exhaustive one, and may be considered in comparative focus.
The Organizing Committee will welcome, of course, topics in the general and
broad study of the religious phenomenon.
-
National and Ethnic Identity and Religion
- Religion, Migration and
Transnationalism
- Religion and the
Borderlands
- Religion and
Neoliberalism
- Religion and the
Environment
- Religion and Fine Arts
- Religion, Film and
Theatre
- Religion and Gender
- Religion and Queer,
Intersexual and Trans Identities
- Virtual Religion and
Millenials
- Religion and Sex
- Religion and Violence
- Theoretical and
Methodological Issues in Religious Social Scientific Research
- Theology and Religious
Studies: Comparative Institutional Configurations
- Church-State Relations
and Tensions
- Musical and Sonic
Dimensions in Religion
- New Binational Religious
Movements
- Indigenous Religious
Practices
- Comparative
Guadalupanismos
- Pachuco, Cholo, and
Chicana Religious Expressions
- Chicana/o and
Centroamericana/o Mesoamerican Appropriations
- Central American
Religious Identities
- Cults of Saints and
Diasporic Communities
- Conversion and Apostasy
- Xenophobia,
Repatriation, and Religion
- Liturgical, Musical and
Ritual Practices
- Conversos and Messianism
- Muslim Identities
- Thaumaturgical Practices
- Congregational Studies
- Spanish-Mexican
Borderlands: From Bolton to Anzaldúa
- Protestant Quincentenary
- “Made in the U.S.A.”
Religions (Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, Pentecostals)
-
“Made in Mexico” Religions (Luz del Mundo, Buen Pastor)
Requirements
Proposals for Thematic
Papers Sessions should include
1) Proposed Title
2) Name of proposer/organizer
3) Email
4) Institution
5) Description: Should
include the theoretical basis and implications for the proposal and be no
longer than one-half page.
Proposals should be sent
rifrem2017@gmail.com.
Note: The meeting
logistics may allow for several consecutive time slots for a thematic papers
session, depending on the number of individual paper proposals accepted. The
format of the sessions will include papers delivered in Spanish and English (or
bilingual).
Key Dates
The date for receipt of
thematic panels/sessions proposals is November 21, 2016. Whereupon the local
organizing committee and the RIFREM steering committee will select the thematic
papers sessions for the Twentieth Meeting, choosing sessions that reflect the conference
organizing theme as well as other themes of interest to the academic community.
These will serve to establish the contours of a subsequent (second) Call for
Proposals for individual papers, to be issued on November 28, 2016. The due date for the individual papers is December 21, 2016. The Organizing
Committee will expedite official acceptances of the thematic papers sessions
and individual papers, in order to allow participants sufficient time to secure
U.S. travel visas.
Conference Site, Accommodations, Travel, etc.
Claremont Graduate
University is a member of the Claremont Colleges Consortium, a cluster of five
undergraduate colleges and several graduate ones, including a seminary, the
Claremont School of Theology. CGU’s School of Arts and Humanities houses the
University’s Religion Department, a unit with strengths in the areas of
Philosophy, Theology, Biblical Studies, History, Women’s Studies, American
Religion, Mormon Studies, and a new focus on Latino and Latin American Religions.
The City of Claremont is
nestled beneath the San Gabriel mountain range and adjoins several suburban
cities in eastern Los Angeles and western San Bernardino counties (Pomona, La
Verne, San Dimas, Ontario, Upland, Montclair, and Rancho Cucamonga). The area
counts a considerable number of hotels with several levels of accommodations,
and is served by the nearby Ontario International Airport. Other regional
airports include Los Angeles International Airport, Burbank International
Airport, John Wayne Airport (Orange County), and San Diego International
Airport. Attendees can also travel within Mexico to the Tijuana International
Airport in order to cross over into the United States; whereupon they can
travel by rail or bus to Claremont (generally via Los Angeles). The organizers
will provide detailed travel, lodging, and other information, as this becomes
available.
Further Information
For further information,
please contact Haley Thomas (haley.thomas@cgu.edu) or Daniel Ramírez
(daniel.ramirez@cgu.edu).
Coordinadores Generales
Dr.
Daniel Ramírez (CGU)
Lic.
Haley Thomas (CGU)
Comité
de recepción de trabajos
Mtro.
Felipe Agredano (East Los Angeles College)
Dr. Lloyd Barba (Williams
College)
Comité
de organización logística y enlace regional
Melissa Fitzpatrick (CGU)
Mtra. Milca Montañez
(Fuller Theological Seminary)
Mtro.
Felipe Agredano (East Los Angeles College)
Mtro.
Jesús Martínez (University of California Santa Cruz)
Lic.
Annette Cortez
María
Palacios
Consejo
de la Rifrem
Renée
de la Torre (Ciesas, Occidente)
Cristina
Gutiérrez Zuñiga (Coljal)
Alberto
Hernández (Colef)
Antonio
Higuera Bonfil (UQRoo)
Luis
Rodolfo Morán (UdeG)
María
Eugenia Patiño (UAA)
Genaro
Zalpa (UAA)
Olga
Odgers (Colef)
Carlos
Garma (UAM, Iztapalapa)
Ariel
Corpus (UNAM)
Patricia Fortuny
(Ciesas, Peninsular)
Nahayeilli Juárez
Huet (Ciesas, Peninsular)
Luis Jesús Martínez
(UATx)
