Calling all ethicists!
Introducing a new book series with Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, international in range and published in paper and electronic formats:
Content and Context in Theological Ethics
Mary Jo Iozzio, Series Editor
Many ethicists, grounded in either philosophical or theological and religious disciplines, are increasingly aware of the wealth of material available from context-based studies. Many are interested in engaging those contexts with their traditions’ long histories of the content of ethics and the philosophies and theologies that support that content. Content and Context in Theological Ethics bridges awareness of and engagement with diverse contexts in order to provide academicians, students, and interested readers alike sustained attention to religious and theological traditions, the ethics perhaps unique to those traditions, and the emerging concerns from scholars writing and thinking about perspectives that have been underreported if not intentionally suppressed in history (past and present).
As the series title implies, Content and Context in Theological Ethics attends deliberately to the content-rich stores (and stories) of theological or religious ethics from context-specific locations.
Focus
Content and Context in Theological Ethics is first and foremost focused on ethics, done from theological and religious perspectives, and rooted in the particular contexts and lived experience of real people in history, in the present, and hoped for the future. The series focuses on the contexts or cultures out of which an increasing number of scholars do their thinking and research regarding the influence of those contexts on the content of ethics conducted from a theological or religious key and how that content has been applied historically, traditionally, and/or subversively by members of the context or community or culture under scrutiny or raised as paradigmatic or novel or a passing fad. The series will explore normative claims about right and wrong, human flourishing or failing, virtues and vices –some would argue that these claims form the fundamental bases and questions of ethics—within the context/culture/community identified and in correlation with norms inherited from or imposed by colonizing and/or dominant forces.
Key Themes
While engaged by diverse contexts, themes that will emerge in the series would span the gamut of research in ethics that engage theological and/or religious concerns, for example: anthropology, sexuality, authority, sacramentality, health (and reproduction, aging, demise), beauty, faith commitments, liberation, virtue, individual and common good, metaphysics, and the “oppressions” of racism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobism, imperialism, ableism, and dogmatism.
The difference that this series presents is “difference”. That is, contemporary work in ethics is increasingly context driven and thereby characterized by diversity; this series will bring the new trends raised by contextual theological and religious ethics to bear on the content of theological and religious ethics. Authors are encouraged to write, as appropriate, on the social, political, economic, legal, and scientific (e.g., human and ecological health) conditions that influence or influenced the inception or reception of a particular tradition(s).
The series will be characterized as constructive ethics by engaging liberation studies and the naming of dangerous memories from a past that included colonizing forces (e.g., the European conquest of the Americas, the far-reach of the British Empire, the Christian missionary outreach to Africa and the Pacific Islands, etc) and/or the dominant forces or ideologies of patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and militarism.
What’s new about this series?
The series will raise new voices and/or new understandings of theologically and/or religiously inspired concerns in response to knowledge uncovered by other disciplines and which impact ethical reflection on the content explored; the series will introduce primary resources for theological and religious ethics in the 21st century.
This series will draw extensively on the work of women scholars and scholars of color with cutting edge critique and construction of worldviews based on the contexts of those who have been underrepresented in the tradition(s).
This series will be the “go to first” to read and to learn what was left out of or distorted by or emerging from the tradition(s) with cutting edge critique and construction of ethics done from theological and/or religious perspectives.
Who are the authors?
Anyone engaged in theological or religious ethics from a context-based hermeneutic is welcome to start a conversation and/or to develop and submit a proposal for a monograph or collection of essays in the series. Like other specializations in theology and religious studies, scholars working out of contexts differing from the traditional/western main in ethics are reaching “critical mass”; this series looks to these scholars to contribute and help shape its subject matter. Among theological ethicists, the series will draw on members of the Society of Christian Ethics, Society of Jewish Ethics, Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics; the AAR “Ethics” section, the “Bioethics and Religion”, “Comparative Religious Ethics”, “Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society”, “Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide”, “Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace” groups, “Religions in Chinese and Indian Cultures” seminar, and “Liberation Theologies”, “Religion and Cities”, “Religion and Colonialism”, “Religion and Humanism”, “Religion and Migration”, “Religion and Sexuality”, and “Scriptural/Contextual Ethics” consultations; and the SBL “Ethics and Biblical Interpretation”, “Ethics, Love, and the Other in Early Christianity”, and “Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature”.
For more information, Guidelines for Authors, or to submit a proposal, contact:
Mary Jo Iozzio, Series Editor
Barry University –THEO
11300 Northeast Second Avenue
Miami Shores, FL 33161
(305) 899-3944
miozzio@mail.barry.edu
Surprises found around every corner, this series is the result of my experiences in bringing Calling for Justice throughout the World: Catholic women theologians on the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Continuum, 2008) from idea to print and the conversations shared with Burke Gerstenschlager of Palgrave Macmillan on how we might collaborate on a long-term project.
I look forward to hearing from you, soon! Peace, Mary Jo
Dedicated to a place in theological and religious disciplines, Palgrave Macmillan will publish the series, international in range, in paperback and electronic platforms.
