Theology and Aesthetics in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires

Dear Colleagues,

The fifteenth century Spanish and Portuguese voyages of territorial expansion initiated “the violent destruction of old social and metaphysical bonds which tied people to one another and to the world around them in order to bind them to new masters who were appropriating for themselves both legal and sovereign power” (Marika Rose). The rise of empires, nation states, identities and social power relations also hinged on the emergence of a new definition of Western Man. Sylvia Wynter has described this definition in Unsettling the Coloniality of Being as arising from a process in which the European laity wrested power from the clergy over words and symbolic representations.

This Special Issue aims to examine efforts to push against the developing global organizing principle of racialized Western Man as well as against the dominant Counter Reformation narrative of divinely sanctioned imperial expansion. We are pleased to invite you to contribute studies of contestatory religious culture from the Iberian peninsula and Spanish and Portuguese colonial worlds that examine the relationship between theology and aesthetics. Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Definitions of artistry and creativity; discourses of beauty, vision, imagination, and/or the senses; theological understandings of living material and the natural world.
• Islamic, Jewish, or Indigenous theological perspectives; conceptions of the human; religious subjectivities; distinctions between clergy and laity and/or between secular and sacred; oppositional or minority theological discourses and aesthetics within Catholic practices.
• Emancipatory theological aesthetics; relationships between embodied ceremony and ritual and discourses of freedom and autonomy; conceptions of Original Sin; the metaphysics of punishment; spiritual purity and perfection.
• Strategies of translation: between languages, religious practices, and/or ontological frameworks. Strategies of reading and writing: adaptation, translation, resignification. Rethinking the notions and practices of making and interpreting signs: beyond “reading” and “writing” texts.

Prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors should submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the Guest Editors (dbultman@uga.edu and dshuger@tulane.edu) or to the Assistant Editor, Ms. Joyce Xi (joyce.xi@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Dana Bultman
Dr. Dale Shuger
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.