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The
British Academy Networks Project on Modes
of Religiosity
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Conferences
and Additional Funding |
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project’s steering committee first met in at the Queen’s
University of Belfast in December 2000, to plan a series of
international conferences on ‘modes of religosity’
focusing on data from a number of disciplines, as follows : |
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- The
Evidence from Social and Cultural Anthropology (held at
King’s College, Cambridge, 20-22 December 2001 and
organized by Dr James Laidlaw)
- The
Evidence from Historiography and Archaeology (held at the
University of Vermont, 1-5 August 2002 and organized by
Professor Luther H. Martin)
- The
Evidence from Cognitive Science (held at Emory University,
14-17 August 2003 and organized by Professor Robert N. McCauley)
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three conferences attracted papers of exceptionally high quality,
and a larger number of participants than originally anticipated.
In addition, an unexpected number of non-presenting participants
attended and subsequently offered to contribute draft chapters
to the project’s publications. The costs of the Cambridge
conference were offset by the availability of subsidized facilities
at King’s College. The costs of the enlarged conference
in Vermont were covered by top-up funding from the Templeton
Foundation, amounting to $12,000.00, and additional support
from the University of Vermont, amounting to $2,335.00. In addition
to the British Academy grant, the Emory conference was supported
by another grant from the Templeton Foundation for $12,000.00
and a grant from the Emory University Subvention fund for $50,000.00. |
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| At
the annual meetings of The North American Association for the
Study of Religion (NAASR)/American Academy of Religion (AAR)/Society
of Biblical Literature (SBL) held in Toronto, 22-26 November
2002, two panels were held as follow-ups to the August Vermont
conference. The first was a panel on the "Implication of
the Modes Theory for the Academic Study of Religion" sponsored
by NAASR. Panelists specifically addressed issues in the comparative
study of religion, in the historical study of religion, and
in the scientific and the social scientific study of religion;
Harvey Whitehouse, the propounder of the ‘modes’
theory, responded to this panel. A second panel, on ‘Imagistic
Traditions in the Graeco-Roman World’, sponsored by SBL,
focused on the Roman cult of Mithraism, on the imagistic traditions
of early Christians, and on the Dionysian cult with a focus
on the frescoes of the Villa dei Misteri from Pompeii; again
Whitehouse offered a response to the panel. |
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Modes
of Religiosity |
h.whitehouse@qub.ac.uk
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