The Art and Religions of Antiquity program unit of the Society for Biblical Literature is soliciting abstracts for one of its Sessions at the 2026 annual meeting.
The theme is "Visibility/Invisibility and Strategies of Concealment".

Religious spaces and practices often involve secreting objects in bags and boxes, towers and grottos, beneath or behind public spaces. Other objects must stay visible, bejeweled, and even watchful, gazing out at the public (in the case of statuary and icons). Concealment itself may be permanent, temporal, or occasional. And between utter concealment and perfect visibility are many degrees of partial visibility (conditioned by lighting, screens, or colonnades, for example, or even viewers' social status). We invite papers on these (and adjacent) themes that move beyond the specific historical artifact (e.g., reliquary, icon, liturgical architecture) to theorize visibility, invisibility, and concealment as key religious dynamics in antiquity and key responses to the agencies of things.

Interested scholars are asked to submit for consideration an abstract of 150 words (max) via the following link:
https://members.sbl-site.org/cfp-detail?z3514106a4d204249bb372910221c671c=005a4f1527-f450-413c-a100-7a3f2bc124f1&z423c93b755704c19a0e7ac980d5d638c=005a4f1527-f450-413c-a100-7a3f2bc124f1.
Full and student members of SBL are eligible to propose papers.
The submission portal will remain open for submissions until 11:59 p.m. EST on 4 March 2026.

Questions regarding the session may be addressed to the Program Unit co-chairs David Frankfurter (dtmfbu.edu) and Karen Stern (ksternbrooklyn.cuny.edu).