The Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies will take place from May 28–30, 2023, under the auspices of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, hosted this year by York University in Toronto, Ontario.
This year’s meeting will take place in person, with some capacity for virtual presentations and virtual access to in-person sessions via Zoom. Papers are invited on any theme relevant to the study of late antiquity, patristic studies, or the study of Christianity between the second and seventh centuries CE. Submissions that consider this year’s Congress theme, “Reckonings & Re-Imaginings,” as it might relate to our discipline are especially encouraged (though not required).
Papers are presented in English or French; time for presentation and discussion is 30 minutes. The proposed title, an abstract of approximately 100 words, and an indication of audio-visual and accessibility requirements should be emailed to the programme coordinators, Maria Dasios and Robert Edwards (csps.acep.2023@gmail.com) by 31 January, 2023. Please indicate in your email whether you plan to attend virtually or in person.
Beyond the general pool of submissions, papers are solicited for two special sessions at our 2023 meeting: one on the topic of “Trauma and Therapeia in Early Christian Writings,” the other on the topic of “Ecology and Patrology.” Please indicate in your email whether your submission is intended for one of these sessions. See below for more information on these special sessions.
Students are encouraged to submit their papers for the Student Essay Prize ($200.00 and a one-year membership in the society). The essay must not have been published or presented elsewhere. Both graduate and undergraduate essays by registered students will be considered. For further details, see our website.
Additionally, CSPS is co-hosting a joint seminar with CSBS to honour the life and work of Harold Remus, who was a member of both CSBS (from 1976) and CSPS (from 1987) until his passing in 2021. The seminar’s goal is to bring together members who have been influenced by his work, either personally or through his scholarship, to present papers on topics related to Harold’s main scholarly interests. The papers will be collected for an edited volume. The first session will focus on the topic “Healers, Magicians, and Miracle Workers.” As a scholar, Harold was perhaps best known for his work on so- called “magic” and “miracle,” and healing practices in the Roman world more generally. The session will feature four invited papers related to healing from the late Second Temple period to Late Antiquity, with a focus on how miracles, magic and healing were related to social interaction or religious conflict in these ancient contexts. The session will also include one paper by an emerging scholar engaging with Harold’s work in new ways. This call for papers is intended to make our emerging scholars aware of this opportunity. Send a proposal (including a working title and 200-word abstract) to Tony Burke (tburke@yorku.ca) and Mona Tokarek LaFosse (mona.lafosse@utoronto.ca) by January 15, 2023. Feel free to inquire also about participation in future sessions of the seminar.
Finally, CSPS will co-host a joint session with “New Horizons in Early Christian Studies,” an initiative co-sponsored by the North American Patristics Society, the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, and the McMaster Divinity College Centre for Patristic Studies.
Special Session: “Trauma & Therapeia in Early Christian Writings”
Once more, we invite papers considering any aspect of this theme, including but not limited to the following questions:
- What counts as trauma in Early Christian sources?
- Was trauma perceived via the senses (as a wound or visible mark), or via the discernment of aspecialist (as concealed or non-apparent)?
- How did early Christians deal with trauma, whether real or perceived (i.e. late antique Christianswho are no longer persecuted, but for whom martyrdom forms a real part of their religiousimagination)?
- In what ways was trauma imagined as benevolent or desirable?
- How much (and in what ways) were Christians concerned to treat emotions?
- How might the preservation of memory in diverse early Christian literary and ritual forms workas a form of therapeia?
- How might literary production itself be understood as a form of therapeia?
- How might early Christian understandings of trauma and/or therapeia positively or negativelyinform efforts to treat the trauma of colonization and systemic racism in contemporary historical and scholarly contexts?
Special Session: “Ecology & Patrology”
We invite papers exploring any aspect of ecology (understood broadly as a branch of study concerned with the interrelationship of organisms and their environments) alongside patristic writings (and/or their late antique contexts) and their legacies, including but not limited to contemporary appeals to patristic authority.
Points of departure may include:
- The ways that particular cosmological, anthropological, Christological, and eschatological imaginaries produce, reinforce or challenge existing understandings of the natural world and its constituents.
- Reflections on right relationship: between Creator and created; between diversely situated fellow humans; between human and nonhuman animals and the earth.
- Contemporary paradigm shifts: from anthropocentric models of dominion (“subduing the earth”) to models of sustainable interrelationship.
- Models of praxis in diverse historical contexts: in Christian late antiquity; in light of contemporary environmental crises.
- Oikonomia as it relates to environmental and social stewardship.
- Historically and geographically diverse Christian ecotheologies & ecopoetics.