“On the Edge” is a bi-annual symposium at Elon University that brings together scholars working at the theoretical and methodological boundaries of those fields that have a stake in the critical analysis of religion—law, history, psychology, anthropology, literature/textual studies, philosophy, art history, political science, classics, folklore, and gender studies. “On the Edge” aims to exercise a self-conscious attention to methodological advances that can be made through interdisciplinarity. Its proceedings contribute to a richly contextualized and multi-layered understanding of the role of religion in societies past, present, and future. The CSRCS aims to bring the research presented at its symposia to publication in peer-reviewed outlets in an efficient and timely manner.

We are excited that papers from the 2023 symposium, “Civil Religion and Race in the United States,” will soon be published online by American Religions just in time for the 2024 US Presidential election! Stay tuned for more information.

This special issue (here) includes articles and papers from the 2021 On the Edge Symposium, “Religion at the Border(s),” edited by Elon faculty conveners, Assoc. Prof. of Geography Sandy Marshall and Lecturer in History Shayna Mehas.

Articles include:
“Captivity, Life and Death at the Nation’s Edge: Two Christian Visions of the U.S. Immigrant Detention Regime,” 69-83
Leah Sarat

“Maryam Jameelah and the Affective Economy of Islamic Revival,” 85-98
Justine Howe

“Nepantla in The Ninth Century: The Monastery of Redon and The Frankish-Breton Borderlands,” 99-112
Thomas A. E. Greene

“Crossing the Threshold,” 113-120
Aarti Patel

“Borders within Borders: Superkilen as the Site of Assimilation,” 121-137
Ehsan Sheikholharam

Select papers from the 2019 symposium, “The Religious Body Imagined,” were published in Body and Religion (2020),

Guest Editor, Pamela D. Winfield.

Pamela D. Winfield (Elon University), “The Religious Body Imagined”

Michal Raucher (Rutgers University), “People of the Book, Women of the Body: Ultra-orthodox Jewish Women’s Reproductive Literacy”

Elizabeth Rhodes (Boston College), “The Male body and Catholic Piety in Early Modern Spain”
Mina García (Elon University), “Lope’s El Hamete de Toledo: The Infidel’s Body as Conquered Land”

Saqer A. Almarri (Binghamton University), “Non-binary Sexual and Gender Identities in the Community: The Khuntha as an Isolated Being in the Mosque”

Anandi Silva Knuppel (Lawrence University), “Seeing, imagined, and lived: Creating Darshan in Transnational Gaudiya Vaishnavism”

Select papers from the 2017 symposium, “On the Edge of Apocalypse,” were published in the June 2018 issue of CrossCurrents, Guest Editors Lynn Huber and Tom Mould.

Contents
Lynn R. Huber and Tom Mould (Elon University), “On the Edge of Apocalypse: An Introduction.”

Arun Chaudhuri (York University), “India, America, and the Nationalist Apocalyptic.”

Megan Goodwin (Northeastern University), “Unpacking the Bunker: Sex, Abuse, and Apocalypticism in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”

William E. B. Sherman (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), “Apocalypse, Again : Language, Temporality, and Repetition in an Afghan Apocalypse.”

Lynn R. Huber (Elon University), “Pulling Down the Sky: Envisioning the Apocalypse with Keith Haring and William S. Burroughs.”

Kent L. Brintnall (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), “The Politics of Revelation: Unveiling Negativity in the Work of Lee Edelman and Georges Bataille”