Call for Papers: Media, Religion and In/vulnerability Proposed Panel at CRESC Annual Conference (SOAS, London, September 4-6 2013) Abstract Deadline: April 8 2013 The Mediating Religion Network invites proposals for papers on the topic of “Media, Religion and In/vulnerability”. Mediating Religion aims to contribute several panel sessions at the 2013 Annual Conference of the Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). This year’s CRESC conference title is In/vulnerabilities and Social Change: Precarious Lives and Experimental Knowledge, and we are convinced that scholars of religion and media can make a valuable contribution to academic discussion of this important theme. Mediating Religion hopes to publish these presentations as a special issue of a peer-reviewed academic journal. The CRESC Annual Conference Call for Papers can be found here: http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/cresc-annual-conference. The conference focuses on “the relationship between vulnerability and invulnerability”, including the precarious lives of the majority and the precarious knowledge and status of religious, political and media elites. Religion and media constitute intertwined sites and occasions for the formation of social relations and connectivities marked by persistent and novel vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities. But what are the conditions that make such relations and connectivities on the one hand durable, strong and powerful or on the other, vulnerable, precarious and risky? Contributions may take historical and/or ethnographic perspectives and may approach the concept of media broadly to include either a direct focus on specific media (e.g., print or digital) and religion (e.g., religious broadcasting) or a wider theoretical focus on mediation as a problematic of social theory in which religion and its (in)vulnerability to processes of rapid social change is a recurring question. Proposals for papers should include a title, a 200-word abstract and a very brief statement of the applicant’s affiliation and research interests. We would like to keep a focus around issues of blame and trust in our explorations of in/vulnerabilities. Submissions should be sent to Dr Tim Hutchings (CRESC Research Fellow) at tim.hutchings@open.ac.uk. Feel free to contract Tim or Marie Gillespie (marie.gillespie@open.ac.uk) to discuss paper proposals. Deadline for Proposals - April 8th 2013. Further information: http://www.mediatingreligion.org/events/call-for-papers-mediating-religion-n... -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).