CFP: 2022 AAR Chinese Christianities Unit
We would like to share the following call for papers from Drs. Christie Chow and Justin Tse, co-chairs of the Chinese Christianities Unit, American Academy of Religion. Please direct any questions or proposal submissions to Drs. Chow and Tse using the links below.
The call for papers for the 2022 Chinese Christianities Unit has been published on the AAR website. See a copy of it below. Proposals for individual papers or panels should be submitted through the Chinese Christianities Unit. We look forward to your proposal by the deadline for the call 5:00PM EST, Monday, March 8, 2022.
The Chinese Christianities Unit at the American Academy of Religion invites papers for the 2022 Annual Meeting that speak to comparative themes in Chinese Christianities.
The Chinese Christianities Unit began as a seminar in 2015. From 2015-2019, the seminar explored various ways in which Chinese Christianities cross boundaries in regional, social, religious, and ecclesiological ways. In so doing, scholars in Chinese Christianities have developed understandings of the field that challenge the consistency of both the terms ‘Chinese’ and ‘Christianities,’ as both may refer to a range of phenomena in our burgeoning field of study.
As we continue to interrogate the boundaries of ‘Chinese Christianities’ as a field, we welcome papers in the following fields:
1) What insights do we gain from moving away from a China-centric, Mandarin-speaking, and Protestant discourse on Chinese Christianities? What is gained from studying comparative practices of ‘Chinese’ Christian communities? To what extent should the field of ‘Chinese Christianities,’ which tends to lend itself currently to historical, sociological, and theological approaches, engage the literary and cinematic field of ‘Sinophone studies,’ which does precisely the opposite of ‘Sino-theologies’ in that it seeks to de-center Han Chineseness and emphasize the scattered communities that are in some ways forced to reckon with ‘Chineseness’ as a hegemonic power?
2) Where do the ‘nation’ or ‘race’ figure in Chinese Christianities?
3) How are Chinese Christianities (peculiar practices, apocalyptism, systematics) lived in everyday practice? How do the contextual experiences of Chinese Christianities shape new theologies?
4) As we come upon the centennial of the anti-Christian movement in China, to what extent do Chinese Christianities in both global and local forms encounter violence in its physical, verbal, mental, and other forms? What ‘Chinese Christian’ apologetics have been deployed to answer this kind of violence? To what extent are violence and persecution understood within the field of Chinese Christianities in the terms of apologetics?
