Quick update: we’ve just sent all the final files for volume 26 to our printer. A bit later than anticipated, but good things come to those who wait. The volume should be ready to launch in two weeks time – so stay tuned for some late April / early May launch party and reception news.
Update: Publication Slate
We are in the final stages of editing our upcoming manuscript Sexed Religion. We are currently slated to launch by the end of this month, April 2016 – pending of course, on our printer.
We will be contacting all authors, reviewers and contributors the moment we have the publication back from the press.
In other news, we have also released our upcoming Call for Papers, focusing on Religion, Ideology and Violence. We are now open for submissions, and will begin the editorial process in August 2016.
End of Year Wrap-Up 2015
2015 is coming to a close and here’s where the JRC currently stands:
Our Office
Our office has recovered from the robbery. It’s been cleaned up and looking better than ever before. Sometimes good things can come from tragedy, even if those good things simply mean that we now have more shelf space and didn’t have to feel guilty about tossing old files.
On a related note, most of the editors will be away from the office and unlikely to answer emails very frequently until January 2016.
Book Donations
The JRC has also donated close to a dozen books to Concordia’s Webster Library. Any books which were already found in their collection will be given to the local student-run Book Coop and sold for very little (with the proceeds going to the Coop). Many of these monographs were older review copies which had never been claimed by their reviewers, or were simply lost in the shuffle from a previous editorial team. We hope they find more use in the hands of students.
JRC Volume 26 – Sexed Gender
We are in the process of finalizing our publication slate for No.1 of Vol. 26 of the JRC. A number of factors have delayed our affairs around the office and caused us to miss our initial launch date of first week of December 2015.
We will be launching the first half of the volume online first. We are aiming to have this done over the Holidays, but may still have to push the launch to January.
No. 2 will continue the process in January and into February with the aim of publishing online by end of March 2016.
We still anticipate releasing a print volume this year and have decided, in order to reduce printing costs, to print both parts of the volume together. The print edition is currently slated to be available April 2016.
AGIC 2016
The JRC will once again be on site for this year’s Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference hosted by Concordia’s Graduate Students of Religion Association. The conference topic will coincide with our most recent CFP for Sexed Religion, and we hope to see many of you there.
We should note that the AGIC is still accepting paper abstracts.
Robbery at the JRC
Dear readers, editors and other supporters of the JRC,
This announcement comes with great dismay. The staff of the JRC has to unhappily report that there has been a break-in at the Concorida Religion Annex located at 2050 Mackay resulting in the vandalism of the JRC office along with the robbery of numerous belongings and office supplies.
As far as we can ascertain, the thieves entered the building sometime over the weekend of November 14th, and entered into two rooms on the third floor. One room was relatively untouched, while our office bore the brunt of the vandalism. Neither the front door to the annex nor any of the doors inside were pried open, leaving us to believe that the perpetrator(s) used a key to enter the building.
Apart from the wanton destruction of much of our marketing material and the scattering of our paper records, two laptops, three toner cartridges, a credit card, batteries, gym bags and everything else which was deemed to be of worth, and easily portable (our massive printer was fortunately saved) have been stolen. At this moment the total loss of property appears to exceed $1000.00 – and likely even more if we were to factor in the full original price on the laptops.
The JRC will press ahead despite this great loss to our finances, workspace and morale. We can only hope that Concordia University’s security staff will continue investigating this incident and implement improved security measures for the future as break-ins have been known to happen in the past in this annex.
In light of these events, we apologize in advance for any further delays in communication and alterations to our publication schedule.
Past volumes now available online
We have just uploaded three of the past volumes online as downloadable PDFs. These articles and book reviews are available free of charge and can be accessed under the “Publications” tab on the main left-hand sidebar of this website.
Good Food: Grounded Practical Theology – Capsule Review
Good Food: Grounded Practical Theology by Jennifer R. Ayres. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013. 233 p. $46.13 (Hardcover).
This morally robust yet concise volume comprises a series of primers on the global and American food systems and explications of the theological and ethical implications of the incommensurateness in the economics and policies of the American food system in a style of Liberation Theology. It is grounded in a clear-eyed yet hopeful down-to-earth ethnography and present-day accounts of church-supported initiatives in sustainable, imaginative urban farming (to fulfill the imperative of ‘food sovereignty’) and transnational food justice. Ayres chose that her grounded practical theology would centre mainly on the complex and ironic tension between food and economic security, on the one hand, and sustainable agriculture on the other. (Ayres, xii) Introducing this magnum opus are the contingencies of a single tomato as illustrative of the tangled nature of food politics as a whole, and the metaphysical notion of the Lord’s Table is introduced thereafter. Part I begins with an investigative journalistic approach, citing Michael Pollan (in the New York Times Magazine in addition to his books and allied films) to bring home to the reader the popularity of food issues and their economic, moral, and political impacts, and to discuss how this seemingly never-ending Zeitgeist of corporately consolidated industrial agriculture came to be in the United States.
I shall now succinctly encapsulate a key flashpoint in Ayres’ monograph, and tie that back to a certain chapter (Desjardins) in the previously reviewed anthology. Chapter Six (Transformative Travel: Education, Encountering the Other, and Political Advocacy) delves into the transnational impacts of neoliberal, supply-side economic policies of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), specifically on Mexico and its culinary traditions and culture. An answer of solidarity to this problem is the Chicago Religious Leadership Network for Latin America (CRLN)’s consciousness-raising program of Encuentros (pp. 119, 122-129), a most grounded aspect of the directive of transnational food justice. This “Tortillas and Trade” quest is then hermeneutically explained in terms of the dialectics of radical hospitality. This has parallels with the inter-denominational and interfaith food bank endeavours that the Desjardins describe in their “The Role of Food in Canadian Expressions of Christianity” anthology chapter. (Desjardins, 77)
In the appraisal within and between these academic works, various thematic parallels can be observed by the reader, which encompass arguments of historical meaning relevant to religious studies. Cross-references of various analytical points between authors is very common in the constituent essays of Edible Histories, Cultural Politics, particularly but not exclusively of those within the same thematic section. The creation or re-articulation of ethnic and politically germane identities through recipes and other food-related discourses is an exemplary thematic parallel between Eidinger’s essay and Iacovetta’s texts (in the anthology and in Gatekeepers). Identities of political significance and community-building are also forged in Ayres’ Good Food, throughout the entire ethnographic portion of the narrative (mainly Part II). These books are thus more apt to be viewed in a comparative approach than one might think.
Sean Remz
Concordia University