Call for Papers
Sacred Land, Haunted Land: On Landscapes and New Religions
I would like to invite submissions for a special guest-edited issue of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. This special issue will consider the relationship of new and culturally alternative religions with landscape, especially perceptions of the land as being imbued with supernatural or spiritual presence, significance, or agency. The landscapes considered may be urban or rural, built or natural, and can include particular geographic features such as forests, rivers, or mountains. The special issue seeks to examine how new religions imbue landscapes with significance, how they seek to legitimate such interpretations, and the ways in which such understandings can clash with dominant societal attitudes to the land. Specific topics of interest might include:
Modern Pagan, New Age, and wider esoteric/occult engagements with landscape and perceptions of “sacred sites” – including controversies over Pagan or New Age uses of indigenous sites in the Americas and Australia
Ley lines, earth energies, and related ideas that originated within the British Earth Mysteries movement, as well as their subsequent transnational spread to other countries
Reinterpretations and uses of feng shui and traditional East Asian geomantic practices in new religious contexts, whether in East Asia itself or elsewhere
Evangelical and Pentecostal “spiritual mapping” and related contemporary Christian ideas about demon-infested landscapes and places
Approaches to haunted landscape and place among ghost-hunting and other paranormal interest groups, including the promotion of such ideas through television and other media
Perceptions of landscape, especially the ancient built environment, within “ancient astronaut” communities and UFO religions
Relationships between landscape and pilgrimage within new religious communities
Connections to legend-tripping and other perspectives from folklore studies
Contemporary ritual engagements with landscape
Please submit a title and abstract (200–300 words) by 1 April 2025 to ethan-doyle-white@hotmail.co.uk. Based on submitted abstracts, the Guest Editor will invite selected authors to submit full manuscripts to the Guest Editor by 1 November 2025, who will work with the authors to prepare their papers for submission to Nova Religio through Scholastica. All manuscripts will be fully peer-reviewed prior to final acceptance for publication. The final decision on each paper will be made by the Nova Religio co-editors.
Full academic articles will usually be between 7-10,000 words including endnotes. However, abstracts for shorter pieces under the themes of Field Note or Research Note, a Perspective essay, or even a book review essay that relates to the theme are also welcomed. The final version of these pieces should be no longer than 5000 words each.
See Nova Religio’s Style Sheet for formatting the paper and citations in endnotes at https://www.pennpress.org/journals/journal/nova-religio/. Scroll down on this webpage to click “For Authors,” and text with information for authors will appear and the link to the. Style Sheet will be visible.
Dr Ethan Doyle White
ethan-doyle-white@hotmail.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment