Call for Papers: 2012 Conference on Medicine and Religion


Call for Papers: 2012 Conference on Medicine and Religion

Responding to the Call of the Sick: Religious Traditions and Health Professions Today

Inaugural National Conference

May 23-25, 2012 Chicago, Illinois

The 2012 Conference on Medicine and Religion, sponsored by the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago, will consider the relation of religion to the practice of medicine, with a focus on clinicians’ responses to the sick and the meaning and spiritual dimensions of the practice of medicine. This inaugural conference is supported by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. Plenary sessions will be organized around the following themes:

1) History of medicine and religion: How did we end up here?
2) Medicine as vocation: In what sense is caring for the sick a spiritual practice?
3) Intrinsically connected? The relationships between religion, ethics, science and the practice of medicine

Lectures and discussions around these themes will be conducted in a spirit that builds bridges between theory and practice, science and theology, the academy and lay communities, the various health professions, and the Abrahamic religious traditions.

We invite abstracts for 90-minute panel sessions and 30-minute paper presentations around the three conference themes:

-- A panel session would ideally incorporate a variety of perspectives on a cohesive theme. The perspectives would compare and contrast and build on one another. A moderator should also be designated.

-- A paper session would be a structured discussion or lecture based on a paper or a work-in-progress. The work presented may be empirical or theoretical, descriptive or normative. One or more authors may present but the first author must present. The central content of the presentation should not be material that has been previously published.

Submission Instructions
Each submission should include the following:

(1) Information about each presenter: name, credentials, home institution, mailing address, email address, and telephone number.
(2) Information about the presentation:

-- Title and abstract (no more than 500 words)
-- A description of how the presentation will be conducted

All proposals should be emailed by 4pm Wednesday, February 15, 2012, to Daniel Kim at dkim327@uchicago.edu. Successful applicants will be notified by February 28, 2012.

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