‘ESSWE Call for papers!’

     

The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism’s 2021 conference is set for Ireland next July, and the call for papers is open until November 1. From the publicity:

Eighth Biannual Conference

of the European Society

for the Study of Western Esotericism

Western Esotericism and Creativity:

Art, Performance, and Innovation

University College, Cork

July 5-7, 2021

This conference brings together scholars who seek to examine the intersections of Western Esotericism and artforms, creative performance, and production. The theme is open to broad interpretation, as well as geographical scope, and historical and cultural context from antiquity to the present day. The relationship between diverse genres of the arts and Western Esotericism are close and multivalent; many artists, historical and contemporary, are practicing occultists or influenced by esoteric philosophies or practices. The theme encourages explorations of manifestations of spiritual creativity and the relationship between esoteric symbols, principles, and religious frameworks, and the production of artwork. A multitude of examples of esoteric-inspired art can be identified, from literature and music to painting and photography. Examinations can also be made of the interconnection between innovation and esotericism, and attention paid to historical and philosophical developments in alchemy and other so-called “occult sciences,” or this aspect can be explored in terms of scholarly theoretical and methodological innovations in the field of Western Esotericism.

Specific sub-themes could include:

• Esoteric themes in art
• Otherworldly encounters and creativity
• Ritual, performance, and esotericism
• Esotericism and literature
• Art and music as techniques in esoteric practice
• Aesthetic dimensions of Western Esotericism
• Occultism, artistic expression, and popular culture

Call for Papers/Panels

While the aim is for ESSWE8 to be a large, cross-disciplinary and inclusive conference, paper and panel proposals will go through a careful selection process to ensure the final program will be of high academic quality as well as focused on the conference theme. We encourage scholars across disciplines to creatively consider the theme and to come up with innovative analytical perspectives and frameworks that examine specific historical and cultural contexts, source materials, unique cases and topics.
As always, the ESSWE wants to provide a platform for intensive exchange and collaborative networking between scholars from diverse perspectives, regions, and on all levels of the academy. In this regard, postgraduate students as well as more experienced and established scholars are all encouraged to participate and submit proposals for papers or panels.

In the many intersections that this conference theme shines a light on, we are confident that ESSWE8 will be a foundational event for developing collaborations in the field and establishing new research avenues for the future.

Paper presentations should have a length of 20 minutes, leaving 10 minutes for discussion.

The conference language is English.

Please send your paper or panel proposal here.

Submission Guidelines

Individual paper proposals must include basic information about the author (title, institutional affiliation/independent scholar), a paper title and an abstract of no more than 300 words and 3-5 keywords about the proposed presentation.

Panel Proposals must include the following information:

• Title of panel
• Panel Description of approximately 300 words
• Purpose, goals, expected outcomes and contribution to the conference theme (approximately 300-350 words)
• Panel Convenor(s) (Organizer(s))’ names, email addresses and affiliations
• Chosen Length: Panels can be 90 minutes or 120 minutes in length
• Special requests/equipment needs

Important Dates

Deadline for submission of paper and panel proposals: November 1, 2020
Notification of acceptance by: January 15, 2021
Beginning of Registration: February 15, 2021
Early bird conference fee until: April 1, 2021
Normal conference fee: April 1 to June 25, 2021

Contact

All questions and inquiries should be directed here.
     

‘Call for papers: Islamic Esotericism’

     
You have two months to answer the call for papers of this year’s European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism. (I didn’t know that existed either, but it is part of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.)

The 2020 meeting will take place September 24-26 at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. The theme is Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts. From the publicity:

Call for Papers:

Islamic Esotericism

in Global Contexts

Deadline for submissions:

May 1, 2020

The European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE) invites you to submit proposals for its 2020 meeting. The theme for the meeting is “Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts.” The aim is to consider the relationship between Islam and esotericism, and Islamic esotericism, in a global context, shifting the emphasis not only from Western perspectives, but also being more inclusive of the experience of Islam beyond the Arabo-Persian domains. We encourage proposals that give prominence to the agency of non-Western actors in negotiating and challenging social, political, and doctrinal “realities” as they manifest in the writings and activities of esoteric groups and systems. The chronological scope thus stretches from medieval to contemporary times. We encourage papers outlining suitable methods of investigation, re-evaluating accepted conceptual frameworks, formulating effective comparative research, and foraying into new textual frontiers.

We invite papers that engage with these aims, but proposals that do not relate to the 2020 meeting theme are also welcome.

There is no fee for attending the meeting and accommodation will be provided, but the cost of travel is the responsibility of individual participants.

Send proposals, before May 1, here. Provide the title and abstract (250 words maximum) of your proposed paper, and your name, institution, academic position, a brief bio, and a short CV.

The meeting is organized by

• Mark Sedgwick, Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies, Aarhus University, and Convener of ENSIE
• Liana Saif, Research Associate, Warburg Institute
• Godefroid de Callataÿ, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Université catholique de Louvain
• Michele Petrone, Postdoc, Université catholique de Louvain
• Francesco Piraino, Postdoc, IDEMEC-CNRS - Fondazione Giorgio Cini

The 2020 meeting is arranged in cooperation with the ERC project on Philosophy in al-Andalus (PhilAnd), and the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Click here for further information on ENSIE.
     

‘Call for papers: ESSWE’

     
In preparation for its Seventh Annual Conference next year, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism has issued a call for papers. “Western Esotericism and Consciousness: Visions, Voices, Altered States” is scheduled for July 2-4, 2019 (NOT June 25-27, 2019 as announced previously) at the University of Amsterdam. From the publicity:

The history of Western esotericism from antiquity to the present is filled with reports of unusual and sometimes spectacular experiences that are claimed to convey higher, deeper, or even absolute knowledge about the true nature of reality. Some typical examples are the many references to direct supra-rational gnosis, ecstatic experiences, and states of divine manía (madness or frenzy) or possession from antiquity to the present; visionary travels to other places, other worlds, or other levels of reality, as well as to past or future periods and events; visionary encounters with intermediary beings (for instance angels, demons, spirits, elementals, ascended masters, divinities); the hearing of inner voices, receiving or “channeling” of spiritual messages, and communication with disembodied entities; and ineffable experiences (for instance apophatic unity) that are difficult or impossible to express through normal discursive language. Common to all such reports is that they fall within the general phenomenology of human consciousness and seem to require some kind of modification or alteration of the normal or average mental states that allow us to negotiate consensus reality. All this makes the experiential dimension of Western esotericism (in both its historical and its contemporary social manifestations) extremely relevant to academic disciplines such as cognitive studies, consciousness research, psychology, or psychiatry. ESSWE7 will be the first major international conference to bring these perspectives in conversation with one another in the context of the study of Western esotericism.

On the level of the humanities and the social sciences, we hope that the conference will provide participants with an ideal opportunity for learning about the phenomenology of unusual experiences across the entire historical spectrum of Western esotericism from antiquity to the present. Here the emphasis will be on empirical research and specialist knowledge about specific historical and contemporary cases. Furthermore, on the level of the study of consciousness, we hope to explore larger and more theoretical questions concerning such topics as the taxonomy and etiology of altered states, their neurobiological foundations, or their relevance to wider concerns such as cognitive functioning or mental health. Here the emphasis will be on how such approaches may help us understand and even explain the rich record of historical and empirical materials central to Western esotericism and, conversely, how these can serve as case studies for the study of consciousness more in general.

ESSWE7 will also be an occasion to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam.

Keynote lectures

Prof. Yulia Ustinova (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)

Prof. Karl Baier (University of Vienna, Austria)

Prof. Sonu Shamdasani (University College London, United Kingdom)

Call for Papers/Sessions

The academic ambitions for this conference are high. While we are aiming for a large and inclusive conference, paper and session proposals will go through a careful selection procedure so as to make sure that the final program will have a sharp focus on the conference theme. We encourage creative and innovative thinking across disciplines combined with deep analysis of specific contexts, materials, sources, or topics. As the ESSWE wants to provide a podium for intensive contact and exchange between scholars on all levels of the academy, graduate and post-graduate students as well as more experienced or established scholars are all encouraged to participate and submit proposals for papers. We are confident that ESSWE7 will be a foundational event for a budding new field of research that has considerable potential for the future.

Each conference session will have a length of 120 minutes, providing room for four papers.

Paper presentations should have a length of 20 minutes, leaving 10 minutes room for discussion.

Conference language: English.

Please send your paper or session proposal here. Before doing so, please have a look at the submission guidelines.

Important dates

Deadline for submission of papers and session proposals: October 1, 2018

Notification of acceptance and beginning of registration: January 15, 2019

Early bird conference fee: January 15, 2019

Normal conference fee: April 1 to June 25, 2019


Click here for ESSWE membership information.
    

‘Exeter nixes EXESESO’

     

The Spring issue of ESSWE Newsletter, the periodical of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, reports the closure of Exeter University’s Centre for the Study of Esotericism. The text of the article is reproduced below.
(h/t Mark Stavish.)

Exeter MA in Western Esotericism

and EXESESO Close

By Mark Sedgwick

Exeter University has announced the closure of the Exeter M.A. in Western Esotericism and of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO). Both were started in 2005 by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, whose early death in 2012 triggered the closure of the program and of EXESESO.

The program and EXESESO opened in 2005, with Goodrick-Clarke as professor and a number of part-time lecturers, including Peter Forshaw (who now teaches in the Amsterdam M.A. program), Hereward Tilton, Clare Goodrick-Clarke, and Christopher A. McIntosh. It was the third European program of the kind, joining Paris and Amsterdam, from which it differed in that it was a part-time distance-learning program, taken over two years. It was supported financially by the Blavatsky Trust, a British charity set up in 1974 “to advance education in and promote or further the study of or research into religion, philosophy, and science” in cooperation with the Theosophical Society in England.

The program started with eight students, and within five years had admitted more than ninety M.A. students and several Ph.D. students. By 2012, five Ph.D. dissertations had been completed (one on Theosophy), and eight were in process (two on Theosophy). A small cloud over the program’s success was cast by occasional rumors of lack of rigor and of some students failing to distinguish clearly enough between academic study and their own personal practice, however, and according to a senior researcher who preferred to remain anonymous, Exeter was not entirely happy with the program. It consisted of a number of optional modules and two required modules before the thesis, one on “The Western Esoteric Traditions: Historical Survey and Research Methods” and one on “Theosophy and the Globalization of Esotericism.” This perhaps gave Theosophy a slightly more prominent position than some would see as appropriate, but only slightly, as the role that Theosophy has played in the development of modern Western Esotericism has certainly been major.

Goodrick-Clarke’s early death in 2012 marked the beginning of the end. According to Exeter’s press office, the decision to close the center and program followed “an internal review and discussions with the [Blavatsky] Trust,” and Goodrick-Clarke’s death “sat alongside consideration for the program as a whole.” Exeter’s press office was unable to comment on the conclusions of the internal review, but there were suggestions that it was not entirely positive. Exeter has made arrangements for the centre’s remaining Ph.D. students to complete their projects in the history department, where there are still scholars working on related subjects, such as Richard Noakes, whose research interests include Victorian psychical research, and Catherine Rider, who recently published Magic and Religion in Medieval England. But Europe now once more has only two M.A. programs in Western Esotericism, not three, which is an unfortunate setback for the development of the study of Western Esotericism in Europe.