Annual Meeting Proposals

The consultation in the Cognitive Science of Religion organizes one or more paper sessions at the AAR’s annual conference every year. Since CSR is a relatively new subdiscipline of religious studies, some people may consider submitting papers to our consultation without a clear understanding of the nature of CSR. We therefore have set up this page to provide some insight into how we understand the field, and what standards we use in selecting papers for the conference.

What is the Cognitive Science of Religion?

The term “Cognitive Science of Religion,” or CSR for short, refers to a family of scholarly approaches in which methods and concepts from the cognitive sciences are used to study religious phenomena and traditions. CSR may apply methods and research from other cognitive sciences in the study of religion and may also apply methods and research from the scholarly study of religion to traditional domains of cognitive inquiry.

“Cognitive science” (singular or plural) is in turn used to refer to a wide range of approaches to cognition, and draws on methods and results from a wide variety of sciences, including but not limited to: biology, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. Given the diversity of disciplines that contribute to them, the cognitive sciences are broadly pluralist in methods and objects of study, but all share a broadly naturalistic focus.

Our Consultation encourages the interaction between cognitive scientists who do not concentrate on religion, specialists in CSR, and scholars of religion who do not view themselves as committed to the research program of CSR.

How We Review

Apart from solicited or prearranged sessions organized by the committee (maximum one per year), we review all papers for regular and additional meeting sessions anonymously. Committee members do not have access to the names of submitters and the co-chairs normally do not access the names until it is time to notify presenters of the committee’s decisions.

Scholars considering submission of a proposal to the consultation may be interested to know that committee members assign numerical rankings to each proposal, and generally write short reviews. Descriptive statistics using numerical rankings are often used to identify those papers that have the most support of committee members, and discussions are then used select papers for acceptance. Thus the consultation ultimately tries to build consensus among committee members, so that the resulting collection of papers represents a shared view of the best work that has been submitted. That said, ultimate responsibility for selecting papers lies in the hands of the chair(s).


What We Look for in Paper Proposals for the Annual Conference

Please be aware that the process of choosing papers is an art and that we cannot simply develop and apply an algorithm to proposals; that said, the members of the committee have agreed to apply the following criteria. Our goal is transparency and fairness in evaluating proposals, insofar as anonymous review will allow.

Because of the inter- and multi-disciplinary nature of CSR, It is hard to describe the sort of papers we are looking for. Originality is important, since the AAR should be the site for discussions of cutting-edge research, and very likely the most original papers will fall outside of any scope we may wish to draw around the discipline. We also consider review sessions or papers that introduce research in a delimited area within the field to those less familiar with the literature in CSR. We are always interested in empirical research, either historical or ethnographic or experimental, that considers particular data in the light of problems in the study of cognition. Papers that merely “apply” existing methods (those that conclude that an existing method may be applied to data different than those that were used in the development of the method) will be considered, but good papers will typically go further and find problems or weaknesses with existing approaches, demonstrate how such approaches can be improved, or develop or propose new methods to expand the toolbox that scholars of religion can bring to bear on the phenomena they study.

Contributions to theory in CSR will also be accepted. In most cases, theory will probably be advanced in the context of particular data, but principled (rather than empirical) argument is central to some disciplines within the cognitive sciences, notably philosophy, and good work of this sort will be treated on a par with empirical work.

These guidelines are admittedly broad, and negative criteria may prove more useful in determining whether a paper is appropriate for our consultation. First, it should be said that CSR is neither a theory nor a philosophy, but rather a collection of theories with disparate philosophical assumptions and implications. Consequently attempts to critique or falsify CSR as a whole will not be accepted, though we encourage papers that test and/or falsify particular theories within the ambit of CSR.

Second, as a science of religion unit, our consultation is not an appropriate venue for constructive theology or for papers that seek to promote dialogue between science and religion using methods from comparative philosophy or comparative theology. Historical treatments of CSR and its place within the modern academy could be acceptable, but in general we feel it is too early to devote much attention to such work: there is enough theory-building and empirical work to do at this point that archaeology of the discipline can be set aside for later.


Criteria in Brief

In short, the following criteria will be applied to proposals submitted to the consultation. The following are encouraged, with the caveats noted above:

(1) Empirical studies
(2) Advances in theory in CSR
(3) Originality
(4) Surveys for non-specialists
(5) Papers addressing topics in the annual Call for Proposals

Keep in mind that original work often will not address topics in the Call for Proposals, and that these are all ceteris paribus standards.

The following are similarly discouraged; papers falling into these categories will not under normal circumstances be accepted:
(6) Papers that do not relate to CSR, no matter what their quality otherwise
(7) Contributions to constructive theology or comparative philosophy

Other criteria. Everything else being equal:
(8) Papers that are well developed will be preferred to promisory notes for true proposals.
(9) Papers submitted just to CSR will be given preference to those proposed for co-sponsorship, and these will be given preference over those that appear intended primarily for another unit.
(10) Efforts will be made to group papers that address common themes, use common methods, or in other ways cohere with each other. Miscellaneous sessions may also be formed, with disparate papers, but there will be a preference for papers that talk to one another.

The CSR consultation seeks paper submissions from a wide range of scholars. The above criteria are not intended to discourage people from submitting proposals, but rather to help those drafting proposals to decide whether our Consultation is an appropriate venue for their work, and to help them craft proposals that will maximize constructive interaction with fellow colleagues who attend the sessions we sponsor.