Utopian Studies

Call For Papers: Utopian Studies is planning on holding three sessions at the 2024 Annual Meeting. Our first session will be an invited panel discussion co-sponsored with the Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament Unit and will focus on the theme “Jewish and Christian Utopian Communities of the Hellenistic-Roman Era.” Our second session will be an open session co-sponsored with the Latina/o/e and Latin American biblical interpretation group; Islands and Islander Hermeneutics; Apocalypse of John in Ancient and Modern Contexts, Contextual Hermeneutics; Reading, Theory, and the Bible; and Metacriticism. This session will focus on the impact and influence of the work of the late queer performance theorist José Esteban Muñoz on the study of religion and sexuality, especially since 2024 is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Disidentifications. This session welcomes attention to any facet of Muñoz’s work. In biblical studies, we are particularly interested in the intersections of his thought with latinidades, gender, sexuality, island hermeneutics, the apocalypse, and the utopian. For our third session, we have an open call for proposals that address texts, issues, and imagery often treated as exemplars of utopia within Biblical Studies. We welcome papers from across the breadth of literatures, art, and material culture that SBL encompasses, and we aim to incorporate papers using a variety of methodological approaches. We are particularly interested in proposals addressing the topics of “ritual space,” “human-divine interactions,” or “physical manifestations/transformations” in ancient (Israelite, Jewish, or Christian) literature. Papers should attend to theoretical issues of Utopian Studies. Scholars at all levels are encouraged to submit.

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