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We are soliciting academic papers to be included in an edited collection entitled "The Wormy Corpus: Worms, Parasites, and the Body in Religion and Culture, East and West." The collection is based on a conference held at Boston University last spring and sponsored by the Boston University Department of Religion and the American Academy of Religion. We are especially interested in essays that focus on worms in the contexts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and African cultures. All entires, however, will be given close consideration. Please see original call for papers below.
Proposals of not more than two pages should be emailed to Brenda Gardenour at bgardenour@stlcop.edu
Deadline for proposals: January 15th, 2009
Across cultures and disciplines, worms and parasites are a source of revulsion, reflecting a very human fear of being invaded and consumed by both internal and external forces. Worm infestation, fear of worms (helminthophobia) and worm-hatred are visceral, and linked to identity and the boundaries of the self, for to be penetrated by worms is to lose one's own individual identity to a predominantly invisible "other." As topic of inquiry, worms and parasites invite an interdisciplinary discussion between Religious Studies, History/History of Science, Literature and the Fine Arts, Anthropology, Sociology, and the Medical Humanities. The goal of this conference is to gather together scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss not only worms and parasites but also their role in the development of culture, history, and religion--and through this to illuminate the semi-permeable boundaries between academic disciplines, religion, and medicine, as well as between the body, soul, environment, and cosmos.
We welcome presentations from individuals across the disciplines on religious, literary, and medical texts, the fine arts, film studies, sociology and health studies, anthropology, and the healing arts and sciences from cultures across the globe.
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