This series invites proposals in classical phenomenology, French phenomenology, pre- and post-phenomenologies, and in methodologies that bridge phenomenology and analytic philosophy. The relation between phenomenology and religious experience can be considered in a variety of modes: epistemic (phenomenology as a "rigorous science" of religious experience in Husserl's sense); ontic (phenomenology as a way to access the core motive, or regulative ideal, of religion); analogical (phenomenological experience as a secular version of religious experience); generalizing (religious experience turning into phenomenological experience when stripped from its dogmatic frame), etc. Proposals can take critical, descriptive, theoretical, comparative, historical, or other approaches, and they can focus on the interplay between religious or spiritual experience and assorted theoretical approaches, or proceed from such experience towards building a new theory. In accord with Husserl’s original intent, the series welcomes attempts to locate spiritual or religious experience within a broader theory of the sciences (Wissenschaftslehre) and to expand phenomenology towards transcendental philosophy and metaphysics.

The series covers five areas:
1) Clarifications of religious and spiritual experience, its formal phenomenological research, and its relationships to art, textuality, culture, anthropology, politics, and comparative religion;
2) Metaphysical extensions of the phenomenology of religious and spiritual experience;
3) Existential and psychological analyses, in different traditions, of religious and spiritual experience;
4) Theologies of religious experience, with or beyond a specific focus on ritual and liturgy, including liberation theologies, feminist theologies, theologies at the intersection of religious experience and race, social status, etc.;
5) The phenomenology of religious and spiritual experience as applied to and/ or examined within medicine, nursing, and the health sciences and the natural and social sciences.

The series is published in cooperation with the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience, www.sophere.org.


Editor(s): Michael Barber (michael.barber@slu.edu), Peter Costello (PCOSTELL@providence.edu), Olga Louchakova-Schwartz (founding editor, olouch@ucdavis.edu), and Martin Nitsche (nitsche@flu.cas.cz)
Advisory Board: Jason Alvis (University of Vienna), Angela Ales Bello (Pontifical Lateran University), Michel Bitbol (The French National Center for Scientific Research), Carla Canullo (University of Macerata), David Ciavatta (Ryerson University), Crina Gschwandtner (Fordham University), Neal DeRoo (The King’s University), Thomas Fuchs (University of Heidelberg), James G. Hart (University of Indiana), Richard Kearney (Boston College), Jeff McCurry (Duquesne University), Felix O’Murchadha (National University of Ireland, Galway), Dermot Moran (Boston College), Tom Nenon (The University of Memphis), Ryōsuke Ōhashi (Universities of Kyoto and Osaka), Vincent Pastro (Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and Aquinas Institute of Theology, St Louis), Hans Rainer Sepp (Charles University), Michel Staudigl (University of Vienna), Claudia Welz (Aarhus University)
Staff editorial contact: Deanna Biondi (Deanna.Biondi@bloomsbury.com)