Interdisciplinary Encounters in Religion, Law, and Ethics

The Interdisciplinary Encounters in Religion, Law, and Ethics working group at the University of California-Irvine contributes to the culture of interdisciplinary reading that focuses on probing the tensions in religious and secular ethics and legal systems. 

The group is holding its first interdisciplinary conference on May 10, 2013 in SBSG 1517 at the University of California-Irvine.

The keynote address will be given by Dr. Mark Juergensmeyer, Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at UC-Santa Barbara and author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence on the evening of May 9, 2013.

The conference will be open to the UCI community and the greater UC system along with the broader public.

This conference will focuson two broad themes. The first is religion and law. From British debates over Islamic law to the regulation of religious garb in France, the intersection between religion and law raises many questions. To what extent does law influence religion, and vice versa? Does the law privilege some religions over others? Can rights to religious freedom conflict with other rights?

These legal questions raise a host of ethical concerns. Moreover, religious activists and thinkers have contributed to ethical debates on topic sranging from bio ethics to poverty to environmentalism. The intersection between religion and ethics forms the second theme.

Possible presentation topics include, but are not limited to ,the following:

·         Individual rights and religious group rights

·         The mora lvalue of secularism

·         Religious law

·         Theological approaches to contemporary moral problems

·         Moral, legal, and politica ltheory in classic religious thinkers

·         Theism and meta ethics

The conference will consist of a series of panels. We invite graduate students and facultyin all fields to submit presentation proposals.

SUBMISSIONGUIDELINES:

Deadline for submission: March10, 2013, 5pmPST

Send an attachment containingthe followinginformationto

[email protected]:

1.      Name

2.      Institutional affiliation

3.      Contact information(email, phone number, mailingaddress)

4.      Title of presentation

5.      Abstract (no more than 500 words)

Organizers will respond to submissions by March 15, 2013.

This conference is supported by the Center in Law, Society and Culture, Program of International Studies, and Religious Studies program at the University of California, Irvine.