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Call for papers: Liturgy and the Senses

3 September 2026

In which ways do Christian and Jewish worship form, employ, invoke and evoke on human sense perception—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, kinesthetics and proprioception, as well as the imaginative faculties? That is the focus of a conference in April 2027. Those wishing to present are invited to submit abstracts by 10 September.

About the conference

The conference "The Work of Human Hands: Liturgy and the Senses" (April 15-17, 2027) will convene scholars from a wide variety of disciplines from around the world at the University of Notre Dame to share their work and wisdom on the intersection between liturgy and the senses.

We invite liturgists, art historians, musicologists, theologians, biblical exegetes, patrologists, historians, musicians, artists, scholars of religion and of ritual, disability specialists, anthropologists, sociologists, ethnographers, archeologists, philosophers, catechists, pastoral practitioners, etc. to an interdisciplinary, constructive conversation. 

Those wishing to present are invited to submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by September 10, 2026

More information

For the full call for papers and more information, please see the conference site

We are thankful for the support of the Theology Department (Liturgical Studies) at the University of Notre Dame, Sacred Music at Notre Dame, the Raclin-Murphy Museum of Art, the Notre Dame Arts Initiative, the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, and the Global Catholic Research Initiative at Notre Dame. This conference is a memorial tribute to Nathan P. Chase (1990-2025).