Secular Studies
Editors-in-Chief:
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John Shook
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Niels De Nutte
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Associate Editor:
Carolin Kosuch
Carolin Kosuch
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As of 2024, Secular Studies is published online only.
Secular Studies publishes original research on secularity, both historical and contemporary, and secular issues and agendas from multi-disciplinary and international perspectives. Historical, literary, cultural, political, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies of secular thought and living are sought, along with research on nonreligion, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and naturalism. Also welcome are comparative, intersectional, and cross-cultural studies of secularity and secular people, investigations into types of secularism and patterns to secularization, and explorations of church-state relations around the world. Suitable submissions will receive double-blind peer review. All articles are published in English.
Secular Studies publishes original research on secularity, both historical and contemporary, and secular issues and agendas from multi-disciplinary and international perspectives. Historical, literary, cultural, political, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies of secular thought and living are sought, along with research on nonreligion, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and naturalism. Also welcome are comparative, intersectional, and cross-cultural studies of secularity and secular people, investigations into types of secularism and patterns to secularization, and explorations of church-state relations around the world. Suitable submissions will receive double-blind peer review. All articles are published in English.
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- External Indexers:
Edited by:
John Shook, University at Buffalo, USA
Niels De Nutte, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Associate Editor:
Carolin Kosuch, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Editorial Board:
Jacques Berlinerblau, Program for Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University, USA
Jocelyn Cesari, Political Theory and Middle Eastern Studies, The Sorbonne, Paris, France
Caroline Corbin, Law, University of Miami, USA
Jonathan Fox, Political Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Zoya Hasan, Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Leo Igwe, Philosophy, Religion, and African Studies, Nigeria
Yolande Jansen, Philosophy and Humanism, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Paula Montero, Anthropology, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Political Science, Think Tank Researcher in Washington, DC, USA
Graham Oppy, Philosophy, Monash University, Australia
Anthony Pinn, Religious Studies, Rice University, USA
Johannes Quack, Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Michael Rectenwald, Global Liberal Studies, New York University, USA
Michael Ruse, Philosophy, Florida State University, USA
Tatjana Schnell, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Murat Somer, Political Science and International Relations, Koç University, Turkey
Tim Whitmarsh, Classics, Cambridge University, UK
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Cultural Sociology, University of Leipzig, Germany
Phil Zuckerman, Sociology, Pitzer College, USA
John Shook, University at Buffalo, USA
Niels De Nutte, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Associate Editor:
Carolin Kosuch, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Editorial Board:
Jacques Berlinerblau, Program for Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University, USA
Jocelyn Cesari, Political Theory and Middle Eastern Studies, The Sorbonne, Paris, France
Caroline Corbin, Law, University of Miami, USA
Jonathan Fox, Political Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Zoya Hasan, Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Leo Igwe, Philosophy, Religion, and African Studies, Nigeria
Yolande Jansen, Philosophy and Humanism, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Paula Montero, Anthropology, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Political Science, Think Tank Researcher in Washington, DC, USA
Graham Oppy, Philosophy, Monash University, Australia
Anthony Pinn, Religious Studies, Rice University, USA
Johannes Quack, Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Michael Rectenwald, Global Liberal Studies, New York University, USA
Michael Ruse, Philosophy, Florida State University, USA
Tatjana Schnell, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Murat Somer, Political Science and International Relations, Koç University, Turkey
Tim Whitmarsh, Classics, Cambridge University, UK
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Cultural Sociology, University of Leipzig, Germany
Phil Zuckerman, Sociology, Pitzer College, USA
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Online submission: Articles for publication in Secular Studies can be submitted online through Editorial Manager. To submit an article, click here.
For more details on online submission, please visit our EM Support page.
Download Author Instructions (PDF).
For more details on online submission, please visit our EM Support page.
Download Author Instructions (PDF).
Secular Studies seeks submissions for a special issue that engages with Joseph Blankholm’s The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious (nyu Press 2022). The journal welcomes scholars working in a range of disciplines (sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, literature) and with a variety of methods (ethnography, archival research, textual analysis, cultural studies, quantitative and qualitative analysis). Articles that rely on original research or focus on the Global South are strongly encouraged.
Submissions might build on the book’s core concepts or address questions that it raises; for example:
–What is distinctive about secular people like atheists and agnostics? What “beliefs” do they hold or worldviews might they ascribe to? What practices are they likely to engage in?
–Do secular people like atheists, humanists, and agnostics participate in a “secular discursive tradition”? How has this tradition evolved historically? What are its influential touchstones, and what are its distinctive characteristics today? What are its constitutive debates?
–Blankholm introduces the concept of “secular misfits” to describe those who “mis-fit” normative secularism. What can secular misfits reveal about the project of the secular and the condition of secularity? Are there other examples of “secular misfits,” beyond the secular identities that Blankholm explores?
–The “secular paradox” is the notion that secular people are defined by both their rejection of religion and their participation in a religion-like tradition that organizes a distinctive way of life. Is the “secular paradox” useful for describing contexts outside the United States? What can it reveal about secular people’s lives today and in the past? Does the secular paradox offer insights into secular governance?
–Are there secular structures of feeling? Or distinctively secular approaches to life-cycle stages like childhood, adolescence, marriage, and death? How and why might these stages be seen as meaningful? Is there secular humor?
–Blankholm argues that “secular” rituals are both the rituals that secular people create to mark important times in their lives and the processes through which secular people make “religious” parts of life acceptable. How do these rituals vary across national contexts? How have “religious” beliefs, practices, and institutions been “secularized,” i.e., made free from religion? How have these efforts created various “modes” of the secular?
–How do Blankholm’s notions of the “secular paradox,” “secular misfits,” and a “secular discursive tradition” complement other concepts introduced to explain secular life, such as Johannes Quack’s “religion-relatedness”, Stefan Schröder’s ideal types of secular organizations, or the discourse of the “Protestant secular”? Are there tensions between these approaches, or do they work best in concert?
–To what extent are the religiously indifferent similar to atheists, agnostics, and other secular people? To what extent do they differ, such as in their conceptual vocabularies or lack thereof? And how can the secular paradox help to highlight these similarities and differences?
–How has the secular paradox enabled and foreclosed nonbelievers’ struggles for legal recognition? When considering if they deserve “religious freedom” protections, are they religious, religion-like, or absolutely not religious? How does their status vary across countries and legal regimes?
–If secular people participate in a distinctive way of life that is analogous to religion, what are the implications for theories of church/state separation and for theories of religious freedom? Does empiricism play a special role in liberal governance? How might the inclusion of secular people into a new “religious” pluralism enable healthier democratic discourse? What does it endanger?
Abstracts of no more than 350 words should be submitted to Niels de Nutte (Niels.De.Nutte@vub.be) by December 1, 2023. Those accepted will be notified by the third week of December. Full drafts of essays for publication will be due on June 30, 2024, ahead of a planned publication of the special issue in October 2024.
Submissions might build on the book’s core concepts or address questions that it raises; for example:
–What is distinctive about secular people like atheists and agnostics? What “beliefs” do they hold or worldviews might they ascribe to? What practices are they likely to engage in?
–Do secular people like atheists, humanists, and agnostics participate in a “secular discursive tradition”? How has this tradition evolved historically? What are its influential touchstones, and what are its distinctive characteristics today? What are its constitutive debates?
–Blankholm introduces the concept of “secular misfits” to describe those who “mis-fit” normative secularism. What can secular misfits reveal about the project of the secular and the condition of secularity? Are there other examples of “secular misfits,” beyond the secular identities that Blankholm explores?
–The “secular paradox” is the notion that secular people are defined by both their rejection of religion and their participation in a religion-like tradition that organizes a distinctive way of life. Is the “secular paradox” useful for describing contexts outside the United States? What can it reveal about secular people’s lives today and in the past? Does the secular paradox offer insights into secular governance?
–Are there secular structures of feeling? Or distinctively secular approaches to life-cycle stages like childhood, adolescence, marriage, and death? How and why might these stages be seen as meaningful? Is there secular humor?
–Blankholm argues that “secular” rituals are both the rituals that secular people create to mark important times in their lives and the processes through which secular people make “religious” parts of life acceptable. How do these rituals vary across national contexts? How have “religious” beliefs, practices, and institutions been “secularized,” i.e., made free from religion? How have these efforts created various “modes” of the secular?
–How do Blankholm’s notions of the “secular paradox,” “secular misfits,” and a “secular discursive tradition” complement other concepts introduced to explain secular life, such as Johannes Quack’s “religion-relatedness”, Stefan Schröder’s ideal types of secular organizations, or the discourse of the “Protestant secular”? Are there tensions between these approaches, or do they work best in concert?
–To what extent are the religiously indifferent similar to atheists, agnostics, and other secular people? To what extent do they differ, such as in their conceptual vocabularies or lack thereof? And how can the secular paradox help to highlight these similarities and differences?
–How has the secular paradox enabled and foreclosed nonbelievers’ struggles for legal recognition? When considering if they deserve “religious freedom” protections, are they religious, religion-like, or absolutely not religious? How does their status vary across countries and legal regimes?
–If secular people participate in a distinctive way of life that is analogous to religion, what are the implications for theories of church/state separation and for theories of religious freedom? Does empiricism play a special role in liberal governance? How might the inclusion of secular people into a new “religious” pluralism enable healthier democratic discourse? What does it endanger?
Abstracts of no more than 350 words should be submitted to Niels de Nutte (Niels.De.Nutte@vub.be) by December 1, 2023. Those accepted will be notified by the third week of December. Full drafts of essays for publication will be due on June 30, 2024, ahead of a planned publication of the special issue in October 2024.
John R. Shook, PhD, Philosophy and Science Education, University at Buffalo (since 2006). Formerly, professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University (2000-2006), and Director of Education for the Center for Inquiry and then the American Humanist Association (2006-2013). Shook has revived the academic area of “Atheology” in his book The God Debates (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Shook is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Secularism (2017) with Phil Zuckerman.
Niels De Nutte is a PhD student at the Secular Studies Association Brussels at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He holds a special PhD scholarship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). He studies the history of euthanasia in Belgium since the early twentieth century and has published on the history of organised humanism, editing Looking Back to Look Forward. Organised Humanism in the World (with Bert Gasenbeek, ASP 2019) and the forthcoming The Nonreligious and the State (with Jeffrey Tyssens and Stefan Schröder, De Gruyter 2024). He is an associate director at the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism and Humanism.
Niels De Nutte is a PhD student at the Secular Studies Association Brussels at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He holds a special PhD scholarship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). He studies the history of euthanasia in Belgium since the early twentieth century and has published on the history of organised humanism, editing Looking Back to Look Forward. Organised Humanism in the World (with Bert Gasenbeek, ASP 2019) and the forthcoming The Nonreligious and the State (with Jeffrey Tyssens and Stefan Schröder, De Gruyter 2024). He is an associate director at the International Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism and Humanism.
Secular Studies
Editors-in-Chief:
and
John Shook
John Shook
Search for other papers by John Shook in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by John Shook in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Niels De Nutte
Niels De Nutte
Search for other papers by Niels De Nutte in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Niels De Nutte in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Associate Editor:
Carolin Kosuch
Carolin Kosuch
Search for other papers by Carolin Kosuch in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Carolin Kosuch in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
As of 2024, Secular Studies is published online only.
Secular Studies publishes original research on secularity, both historical and contemporary, and secular issues and agendas from multi-disciplinary and international perspectives. Historical, literary, cultural, political, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies of secular thought and living are sought, along with research on nonreligion, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and naturalism. Also welcome are comparative, intersectional, and cross-cultural studies of secularity and secular people, investigations into types of secularism and patterns to secularization, and explorations of church-state relations around the world. Suitable submissions will receive double-blind peer review. All articles are published in English.
Secular Studies publishes original research on secularity, both historical and contemporary, and secular issues and agendas from multi-disciplinary and international perspectives. Historical, literary, cultural, political, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies of secular thought and living are sought, along with research on nonreligion, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and naturalism. Also welcome are comparative, intersectional, and cross-cultural studies of secularity and secular people, investigations into types of secularism and patterns to secularization, and explorations of church-state relations around the world. Suitable submissions will receive double-blind peer review. All articles are published in English.
-
Online only€155.00$181.00
-
To place an order, please contact customerservices@brill.com
-
Online only€51.00$60.00
-
To place an order, please contact customerservices@brill.com
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