Revisiting Religion and Place in Light of Environmental, Legal and Indigenous Studies

FAIN: EH-288044-22

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Martien Halvorson-Taylor (Project Director: February 2022 to present)
Kurtis R. Schaeffer (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)

A three-week residential institute for 26 higher education faculty to explore the concept of place in religious studies.

"Revisiting Religion and Place," an NEH Summer Institute with the UVA’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab, will bring together religious studies faculty and advanced graduate students for an immersive 3-week exploration of critical new perspectives on the theme of "place." Given recent, dramatic advances on the study of place in the environmental humanities, social sciences, legal studies, and indigenous studies, the time is ripe for rethinking place as a fundamental feature of the study of religion. We wish to introduce scholars in religious studies and related fields to this enormously productive re-thinking of the idea of "place" that has occurred across disciplines, to assist scholars in developing a richer and more nuanced understanding of the opportunities and pitfalls that come with using the category of "place" in thinking and teaching about diverse manifestations of human engagement with the world.