Association for Russian Centers for the Religious Studies

The 5th Congress of Russian Scholars of Religion

November 26–28, 2020 Saint Petersburg The State Museum of the History of Religion

“RELIGION AND ATHEISM IN THE 21st CENTURY”

Association for Russian Centers for the Religious Studies announces the 5 th Congress of Russian Scholars

of Religion. The 5th Congress continues the series of scholarly events being started at the 1 st Congress (St-

Petersburg, 2012) and afterwards kept up at the 2nd (St. Petersburg, 2014), the 3d (Vladimir, 2016) and the 4th (Blagoveshchensk, 2018) Congresses.

The Congresses provides an interdisciplinary platform to discuss a great variety of problems, trends and

phenomena in the field of contemporary Religious Studies, being the complex research area,

methodologically based on humanities, social sciences and also, particularly during the last decades, on natural science.

Previous Congresses took in participants from many cities of Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg,

Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Blagoveshchensk, Chita, Vladimir, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Voronezh,

Ekaterinburg, Elista, Kazan, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod Veliky,

Novosibirsk, Omsk, Oryol, Perm, Ryazan, Saratov, Sevastopol, Tambov, Tomsk, Tyumen, Ufa, Yakutsk, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg.

The scholars from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Denmark, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,

Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom have traditionally contributed to the Congresses.

The Organizing Committee of the 5th Congress of Russian Scholars of Religion is happy to welcome all

the scholars interested in Religious Studies both from the Russian Federation and abroad. Young scholars,

postgraduate and graduate students are especially encouraged to contribute to the 5 th Congress.

The focus of the Congress is on the following themes:

 Post-postsecularism: crisis of faith or modernization?

 Privatization of religion or new publicity?

 New Age and religious syncretism

 Religion and contemporary natural science: convergence, co-existence or conflict?

 Naturalistic approaches to consciousness and contemporary science of religion

 Archeology, paleogenetics and modern concepts of the origin of religion

 Religion, atheism, indifferentism and problems of identity

 New Humanism and religious values. Does atheism have moral values?

 History of atheism and contemporary philosophy

 Belief and unbelief in contemporary fiction

 Religious artifacts in secular museum space

 Religious and anti-religious motives of folklore and post-folklore

 Religious images and contemporary art

 Religious and postreligious in contemporary cinematography

 Historians of religion and atheism: biobibliographical and prosopographical studies

Renowned experts from all over the world are supposed to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all the above listed themes.

If you are interested in organizing a section or delivering an abstract, please submit your section details or

abstract paper through the State Museum of the History of Religion web-site using the following link http://gmir.ru/special/v_congress_arir/ .

Congress Proceedings are supposed to be published as a printed book with ISBN and indexed in the

RUSSIAN SCIENCE CITATION INDEX. All submitted abstract papers will be considered for

publication. The final decision for paper selection will be based on peer review.

The Organizing Committee reserves the right to select submitted papers for participation in the 5 th

Congress and afterwards publication and also to arrange section details if necessary.

Participants’ presence is required. All the authors will get a Certificate of Participation.

Transportation, accommodation, and other expenses are to be covered by the applicants’ organizations

The registration fee for the 5th Congress is 1000 RUB.

Ekaterina Teryukova –Deputy Director of the State Museum of the History of Religion, Associate

Professor, Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies of St. Petersburg State University (Saint-Petersburg) – Secretary of the Organizing Committee;

Evgeny Arinin – Professor, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Vladimir State University (Vladimir);

Petr Dashkovsky – Professor, Head of the Department of Regional Studies of Russia, National and

State-Confessional Relations, Head of the Laboratory of Ethnocultural and Religious Studies of the

Faculty of Mass Communications, Philology and Political Science of Altai State University (Barnaul);

Ekaterina Elbakyan – Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Religious Studies and

Ethnocultural Studies and Expertise, Institute of Public Administration and Management of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Moscow);

Nikolay Shaburov – Professor, Head of the Educational and Scientific Center for the Study of Religions of the Russian State Humanitarian University (Moscow);

Elena Stepanova – Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Institute for Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the RAS, (Yekaterinburg);

Igor Yablokov – Professor, Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Moscow State University (Moscow);

Andrei Zabiyako – Professor, Head of the Department of Religious Studies and History of the Amur

State University, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the SB RAS,

Editor-in-Chief of Religion Studies Journal (Blagoveshchensk) – Chair of the Program Committee.

Congress Program Committee

Andrei Zabiyako – Professor, Head of the Department of Religious Studies and History of the Amur

State University, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the SB RAS,

Editor-in-Chief of Religion Studies Journal (Blagoveshchensk) – Chair of the Program Committee;

Tatiana Chumakova – Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies,

St. Petersburg State University (St. Petersburg) – Deputy Chair of the Program Committee;

Veronika Khorina – Supervisor, the State Museum-Monument “St. Isaac's Cathedral”;

Tatiana Khizhaya – Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Vladimir State University (Vladimir);

David Damte – Independent scholar (Moscow);

Alexandra Sagalova – Senior Fellow, the State Museum of the History of Religion (St. Petersburg);

Elizaveta Kizyma – Research Fellow, the State Museum of the History of Religion (St. Petersburg) –

Secretary of the Program Committee. Contact: congress@gmir.ru +7 812 314 58 10

The participation for postgraduate and graduate students is charge-free.

The registration fee covers Congress folder, Certificate of Participation and access to coffee-breaks.

The fee is paid during registration at the Congress venue. Both cash and non-cash payments are available.

Working languages: Russian, English

IMPORTANT DATES:

March 15, 2020 – Section proposals Deadline

May 10, 2020 – Abstracts Submission Deadline

July 30, 2020 – Abstracts peer review

September 10, 2020 – Notification of Acceptance/Rejection

November 26–28, 2020 – The 5th Congress dates

If you would like to submit both section proposal and abstract paper, please be aware of two

deadlines (March 15 and May 10).

If you have any questions, please contact: congress@gmir.ru, +7 812 314-58-10.

Congress Organizing Committee:

Marianna Shakhnovich – Professor, Head of the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious

Studies of St. Petersburg State University(Saint-Petersburg) – Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee;

Liubov Musienko – Director of the State Museum of the History of Religion (Saint-Petersburg) – Co-

Chair of the Organizing Committee;