PHENOMENOLOGY IN DIALOGUE: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE LIFEWORLD
Regional SOPHERE conference in Berkeley, California
Hosting Institutions: Graduate Theological Union, Jesuit School of Theology, Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute
Friday, January 26 (all day), to Saturday, January 27 (all day), 2018
Keynote speakers: Michael Barber (Saint Louis University), Tanya Luhrman (Stanford University), and Marc Jean-Bernard (University of Puerto Rico)
The conference is divided into two main sections: critical issues in the phenomenological research of religious experience, and the phenomenology of religious experience in various domains of the lifeworld, such as ministry, preaching, corporate world, ecology, health practices, and pastoral and clinical counseling.
In the first section we welcome contributions which advance research of religious experience by articulating the areas of special reflection, as well as the areas of new and visionary problematic. How do we thematize the problem of religious experience? How does the traditional phenomenological first-person authority play itself out in the phenomenology of religious experience? Should phenomenological research of religious experience be in dialogue with natural science research? What are the spheres, regions and horizons in which we can understand religious experience? How do traditional topics of phenomenological philosophy, such as the ego, subjectivity, embodiment, or intersubjectivity, relate to the study of religious experience? We invite these and other questions to be treated not only in light of classical phenomenological scholarship, but also within interpretive and critical approaches; we also welcome contributions coming from the perspectives of theological phenomenology such as, for example, perspectives connected with the work of Schleiermacher or Troeltsch, French phenomenology, and the phenomenology of life.
In the second section, we would like to read papers which discuss the positioning of religious experience in various lifeworlds. How do religious realities manifest across the different traditions and practices? What regional ontologies of knowledge create the contexts for successful phenomenological research of religious experience? How can phenomenology clarify the role of religious experience in the world of business, in emergent theologies of hope, or in healthcare?
SOPHERE COLLABORATES WITH 
OPEN THEOLOGY, DE GRUYTER
The conference papers will be considered for publication in a special topical issue.
Papers should be up to 4500 words/30 min of reading time. Detailed abstracts (250-500 words) will be considered. Please submit the abstracts and/or papers at conference@sophere.org
https://sophere.org/conferences/regional-conferences/submit-your-paper/
Deadline for submission NOW EXTENDED: December 30, 2017
Registration is open https://sophere.org/conferences/regional-conferences/registration/
Conference inquiries conference@sophere.org
Call For Papers
Location and Accommodations
Submission
Registration
Program and Abstracts