Call for Papers: Special issue of Literature and Theology

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Literature and Theology: Cognitive Science, Literature and Religion

We invite essays that bring together the fields of cognitive science, literature and religion. Such topics might include the cognitive nature of prayer, ritual, faith, mysticism, myth-making, and belief as represented in the literature of a particular culture and historical period; principles of neurotheology as reflected in reading practices, literacy, the use of analogy and metaphor; theory of mind and the construction of God-images in literature and culture; cognitive theories of acting, dramaturgy, and performance in devotional and religious texts; and more multidisciplinary inquiries from the related fields of evolutionary psychology, neurophilosophy, and cognitive anthropology.

Accepted essays will be published in a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press).

Please send essays of no longer than 7,000 words to Paul Cefalu, Lafayette College and Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine. Deadline for receipt of essays is September 1, 2012.