Surveying Our Understanding of Digital Religion

You are cordially invited to an engaging, upcoming panel entitled" Surveying Our Understanding of Digital Religion" at the upcoming American Academy of Religion  meeting in San Francisco.

This event will be held on Saturday, 19 Nov 2011 from 9:00 am-11:30 am, in the Telegraph Hill room at the Intercontinental Hotel. The panel is sponsored by the Media, Religion and Culture group.

This panel will together bring scholars to reflect on how digital and mobile technologies are changing the field of religious studies by altering and enhancing our understanding how people practice and interpret religion within contemporary culture. It will also feature the work of a forthcoming collection of essays, Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (Routledge), which explore key issues and questions that arise from religious engagement online. Specifically, panel participants will address how online ritual practice challenge traditional notions of embodiment and spirituality, how the internet informs and challenges traditional notions of religious community/authority, how users construct religious identities in digital environments and how the digital realm is shaping our understanding of the very nature of religion.

Panelists Include:
Christopher Helland, Dalhousie University, talking about ritual online
Mia Lövheim,  University of Uppsala, taking about identity online
Heidi A Campbell, Texas A & M University, talking about community online
Gregory Grieve, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, talking about changing understandings of religion online
Stewart Hoover, University of Colorado-Boulder [Respondent]

Please come and join us! And feel free to pass on this information to anyone else you feel who might be interested.