IACSR Call for Proposals

An announcement from IACSR:

Call for Proposals for Presentations at the 2010 meeting of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR) in conjunction with the XXth Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association of the History of Religions (IAHR)

August 15-21, 2010 in Toronto

http://www.religion.utoronto.ca/resources/iahr


The IACSR, which seeks to advance the naturalistic study of religion, invites interested scholars to submit proposals for presentations (lasting no more than 25 minutes) for possible inclusion on the program at its upcoming meeting for 2010 in Toronto. Submissions are welcome on any topic in the cognitive science of religion. The IACSR recognizes that the cognitive sciences encompass a wide array of disciplines and methods, including, among others, experimental research in psychology and neuroscience, computational modeling, ethnographic, historical, archaeological, and comparative studies of religious cognition, and the survey techniques of the social sciences. Presentations advancing new cognitive theories of diverse religious phenomena are also welcome.

Proposals should consist of two pages. The cover page should include the following items ONLY:

1. presentation title

2. word count of the proposal

3. all authors’ names

4. all authors’ email addresses (papers with multiple authors should explicitly indicate which of the addresses should serve as the one to which all subsequent communications about this submission should be sent)

On a subsequent page, the substantive section of the proposal should, again, include the title of the presentation, should not exceed 500 words, and should not contain either footnotes or endnotes or the author’s name(s). The author’s name(s) should only appear on the cover page.

Proposals should be attached as an MS Word file in emails with “IACSR submission” in their subject lines to be sent to Armin W. Geertz at awg@teo.au.dk. The deadline for submission is February 15, 2010.
President Luther H. Martin

President Elect Robert N. McCauley

Secretary General Armin W. Geertz

Sommervogel Archive is Relocated

Michael Donahue's excellent resource, the Sommervogel Archive, is now hosted on Division 36's new webspace. To access it, go there with this link. You also can reach it through the Resources link on my main page.

Independent Lens - PBS

For those of you who are in the US, check your television listings to view Independent Lens. The series is showing two films that are of interest to psychologists who study religion. One is Scenes From a Parish, about racial tensions in a Massachusetts parish over a four-year period. The other, Knocking, offers a look at the Jehovah's Witnesses who are known for their door-to-door proselytizing efforts. Your local show times will vary. Look at this page to locate times in your area.

Essays Related to Religion

Here are two outstanding essays related to religion:

A fascinating examination of the intellectual and social history of Central Asia is found at Wilson Quarterly in an essay by Frederick Starr. He writes about the region's intellectual heights achieved about 1000 years ago, and the religious and other social factors responsible for its decline.

For something concerning morality, take the time to read David Grann's account of Cameron Todd Willingham's conviction for murder. Willingham's children died in a fire; he was convicted of setting the blaze and eventually was put to death for the act. The evidence seems clear, however, that he did not commit the crime, and Texas put to death an innocent man.

An IRB Nightmare

Institutional Review Boards are intended to ensure that people participating in research are being treated ethically, but sometimes their decisions seem senseless. Here is a story of a doctoral student required by her university's IRB to undergo 80 separate reviews of a project that, by all appearances, should have been exempt from review. Read her account of a process gone awry.

Sigh.

Kim Peek Dies

If I were to begin my psychology career now, and if I studied something other than the psychology of religion, it would be to study people like Kim Peek. Born without a corpus callosum, Peek was the inspiration for the movie Rain Man. His amazing ability to memorize left him with an estimated 9000 - 12000 books committed to memory, but at the cost of learning conceptual things with tremendous difficulty. Peek died December 19, 2009, of a heart attack at the age of 58. If you are interested in psychology, do yourself a favor and read about this remarkable person. His hometown newspapers offer stories here and here. This wikipedia biography also includes links to several media appearances that are worthwhile.

A Controversial Op-Ed at the Boston Globe

If you teach students, you may find this post at The Boston Globe to be of interest. The author, a professor of rhetoric and history at Babson College, compares her foreign students with her U.S. students, and finds the U.S. students falling well short of their foreign classmates.