CALL FOR ARTICLES 2024.1 - Dossier Religious discourses on sex, violence, and gender: emerging voices of the Global South

Stories about religion, sex, violence, and gender in the Global South are often conveyed by voices from the North, through a Western Worldview that is informed by myths and misconceptions about bodies within this landscape. These narratives about life, death, and the existence in-between, have lacked an element of experience and awareness that can only be informed by the lived realities of bodies located within these contexts. These embodied realites include, but are not limited to, marginalization, exclusion, and systemic silence from the West. These are voices that are often unheard because they are viewed as the ‘other’ and systematically limited in terms of academic language and perspective. An idea that is informed and enforced by a history of colonization, and the belief that only academic thoughts and writings from the Western view fulfill the standards of excellence within this field, which leaves ‘other’ voices on the boundaries of knowledge creation. These are the misconceptions that we wish to challenge through this call, the assumption that voices from the Global South are silent because they cannot relay their own stories, their realities. It is a challenge of active protest that aims to decolonize the image that is portrayed by the West. It is an act of redefining and re-establishing the identity of the voices that have been pushed to the margins in conversations relating to religion, sex, violence, and gender. This is an opportunity to make visible the rich narratives that exist in the Global South, from the bodies of academic voices that have been established within this area. It is a call to move towards the center of academic knowledge creation.

This call for articles aims to bring together a collection of scientific productions that critically and actively reflect on the current challenges faced concerning the issues of sex, violence, and gender. We are particularly interested in understanding the strategies, effects, contradictions, and fissures of the religious discourse on sex and gender, especially through South-South academic engagement, and the realities that exist within your context. We encourage researchers from South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia to submit their papers for evaluation.

 

Following the brazilian ethic of democratic and free access to quality scientific productions, there is no editorial cost neither for submission nor publication. All that is required is registration on our website, in order to ensure that the process is carried out blind.

Articles from all areas of Religious Studies and Theology will be submitted for double-blind peer review, as long as they are in line with the proposed theme and the journal's norms. We are also open to receiving academic texts that explore other themes, for the section on general topics, as well as book reviews. Papers submitted to this dossier must be sent via this platform by April 20, 2024.

Keywords: Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. Religion and Violence. Coloniality. Decoloniality. South-South engagement.

Prerequisite: Scholars from the Global South, working within the field of gender, sexuality, and religion. 

Submission Criteria:

Global South Research Paper Contributions – Title, Abstract, keywords, author affiliation, author bio, and 5000 - 8000 words. (12 Letter Type, 1.5 spacing, Times New Roman.)

 

****To register on the website: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/sacrilegens/login?source=%2Findex.php%2Fsacrilegens%2Fsubmissions

Coordination:

Dr. Charlene Van der Walt (University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Dr. André Sidnei Musskopf (Federal University of Juiz de Fora)

Ma. Tracey Maswazi Gumede (University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Ma. Giovanna Sarto (Federal University of Juiz de Fora)