Hagiology Seminar
Fictional Saints
Media that represent extraordinary individuals (saints, sages, heroes, etc.) are well known for their interplay between “historical” and “fictional” elements—a polarity that has been justly interrogated in contemporary theory. This roundtable takes up the status of fiction as a cross-cultural dimension of hagiography, in three respects: (1) The textures and functions of fictional artistry in conventional hagiography (e.g. comic or tragic tropes in Christian saints’ Lives, narrative cases preceding Zen Buddhist commentaries) or the “historical” force of even “ahistorical” saintly representations (e.g. Good King Śivi, St. George, Nasreddin Hodja); (2) The role of saintly figures appearing in fictionalized representations of historical religions (e.g. Hesse’s Siddhartha, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Singer’s “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”); (3) Saintly figures and functions in speculative fictional worlds, which may enact saintly dynamics (e.g. Star Wars, DC Comics, Dungeons & Dragons) or upend saintly dynamics (e.g. Star Trek, Cat’s Cradle, Warhammer 40K). Contributions reinterpreting or critiquing the putative polarity of history and fiction in religious media are also welcome.
In keeping with the collaborative ethos of the Hagiology Seminar, this roundtable will involve participation in a few virtual conversations leading up to an in-person session at the 2025 AAR Annual Meeting.
Saints and (Alternative) Embodiment
The embodied aspects and bodily dynamics of extraordinary individuals (saints, sages, heroes, etc.) are well known and vary widely across traditions and time periods. Saints have been regularly studied for the ways that their (cultivated and represented) bodies perfect, unsettle, transgress, and critique human norms. This panel extends these reliable questions about saintly embodiment beyond the realm of the human. How do they exist in bodies that are decidedly not human or adjacent to the human realm (animal, spiritual, technological, spatial, etc.). In other words, in what ways are saintly figures embedded in systems of nonhuman life (and with what effect in their hagiographical media)? In what ways do they interact with or adopt the attributes of animals, plants, and nonliving spaces (e.g. in comparisons of saints with bees, trees, stones, and so forth)? In what ways have saintly bodies transcended or exited the realm of the human through their own supernatural powers or others’ technological adaptations? To what extent and in what ways do theoretical discussions of animality, ecology, technology, materialism, and objects/things (or more generally the “nonhuman turn”) advance the work of comparative and cross-cultural analysis of such extraordinary individuals?
In keeping with the collaborative ethos of the Hagiology Seminar, this roundtable will involve participation in a few virtual conversations leading up to an in-person session at the 2025 AAR Annual Meeting.
This seminar is dedicated to exploring the “hagiographical” as a category that transcends the particular contextual boundaries of religious traditions, while functioning as a focused and sustained site of collaboration, pedagogical exploration, and theoretical foundation for better refining the Study of Religion. It takes up the question of “hagiography,” and, using a comparative method, interrogates its broad analytical utility. By inviting a wide-range of traditions and types of scholarship (textual, materially-oriented, ritually-conceived, oral, historical, and contemporary) into a diverse scholarly conversation and collaborative community, we seek to challenge the normative, Christian rendering of the term. We place the growing need for cross-fertilization at the center of our methodological approach, building it into our theme and function. Hagiology is an inquiry that has been marked by a range of interpretive strategies and vectors of influence, from early practitioners and emulators, to authors and compilers, to commentators and historians, to societies and contemporary practitioners, to re-imagined historical prominence. It has finally emerged as a dynamic area for comparative studies. Ultimately, this seminar will foster dialogue among scholars from a range of institutions and intellectual traditions. Its aim is to use the collaborative and comparative methods to resituate hagiology within the current religious studies context, and to explore how this field can best support, articulate, and inform the broader field regarding the importance of doing Hagiology in a productive manner that is commensurate with the prevalence of its material forms.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Hollander | ahollander@geii.org | - | View |
| Todd French | tfrench@rollins.edu | - | View |