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NCC Center for the Study of Japanese Religions
Call for Papers
Open Call for Papers
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Should you wish to send the editor a manuscript. Please contact:
japanesereligions@gmail.com
Upcoming Issue: Japanese Religions Vol. 46
Special Issue: The Body Religious in Japan
Guest Editor: Or Porath
2024
This special issue will investigate the role of the body in Japanese religion, and how it has been configured in religious, historical, and cultural contexts from the medieval period to the modern era. It is commonly held that in the medieval period the body was largely conceptualized from the lens of religious thought and framed within ideas and taboos concerning purity, pollution, karma, as well as medical, embryological and astrological concerns. The modern period saw the rise of medical and pathological discourses which furthered the view of the body as grounded in biology. Scholars might address the following questions based on multiplicity of theories and methods: are there Japanese paradigms of the body? What religious and cultural knowledge can be extrapolated when objecting the body to critical inquiry? What values did religions ascribe to dissident bodies? How did ordinary practitioners and religious institutions mobilize the body for social and political gains? How have ritualists and laymen prescribed and rewritten masculinity and femininity? Addressing theoretical dilemmas and unresolved issues in the study of the body in Japan, the participants will look particularly for links across time and space, pay attention to embodiment, affect and sexuality, and rethink the theoretical parameters of the study of the body in Japanese religiosities
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