Mysticism Unit
Mysticism and Liberation: Freedom, Confinement, and Exile
This panel invites papers on topics of mysticism and freedom that center liberatory practices and explicitly challenge authoritarian or oppressive structures. Of particular interest are diverse cultural practices, non-western, Indigenous, and de-colonial approaches, and comparisons between Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric traditions in the liberation and/or confinement of human/religious freedoms.
- How (or does) mysticism “liberate”?
- Mysticism and exile
- Liberatory practices / mysticism and oppression / authoritarianism
- Confinement / Liberation
- Mysticism & authority: center and margins
Mysticism, Pedagogy, and Poetics
This panel invites papers that consider the relationship between mysticism, pedagogy, and the poetic. Proposals can consider methodologies and practices related to mystical pedagogy, theoretical approaches to the study of mysticism, and the role of affect. Topics can include but are not limited to:
- Pedagogy and transmission
- Teaching and ineffability
- The poetics of mystical instruction
- Emic and etic approaches
- Embodiment and imagination
Mysticism, Inter-Spirituality, and Multiple Religious Belonging
Co-sponsored with the Christian Spirituality Unit
“Inter-spirituality” and “multiple religious belonging” are categories that scholars utilize to describe individuals and communities that lie beyond the borders and boundaries of traditional religious affiliation or identification. This panel invites papers that investigate the relationship between mysticism and inter-religious, inter-monastic, and/or “multiple” religious identification(s). Proposals can include recent trends and contemporary inter-spiritual mystics or movements, as well as past examples of persons, communities, or theorists who embody or exemplify multiple or religious cross-identification based upon their own mystical experience or praxis. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Mysticism and multiple religious belonging
- Mystical transgressions across religious borders and boundaries
- Apophatic and cataphatic approaches to inter-spirituality/multiple religious belonging
- “Universalist” and “perennialist” currents; Methodological concerns and lived praxis
- “New Monasticism” and inter-spirituality
- Synthesis vs. syncretism; inter-religious hybridity
Transhuman Mysticisms: Animals, Aliens, and Objects
Co-sponsored with Arts, Religion, and Literature Unit
This panel considers new approaches to the study of mysticism and the arts, with an emphasis on non-human, more-than-human, and transhuman “mysticisms,” particularly as expressed in visual art, music, film, and science fiction. Topics to be considered include:
- Multi-species mysticisms
- Mysticisms of unfolding: micro- and macrocosmic realities and hierarchies of emergence
- “Astro” mysticisms and “outer” spaces, particularly as represented in film, literature and the arts
- The “supernatural”: mysticism and ecology; mysticism and the natural world; "plant mysticisms"
- Mysticism and Science Fiction
- Mysticism and/as "outsider art"
- Mysticism and New Materialism
This Unit began as a Consultation within the AAR in 1987 and achieved formal Unit status in 1989. While its early focus was primarily Christianity and Western religions — and the study of experience and textual interpretation within those areas — the Unit has grown and changed over time, paralleling the change and growth in the AAR itself. Today, our conversations cut across boundaries that characterize many of the Program Units within the AAR — boundaries of discipline, tradition, temporality, and region. Members of our Unit use different methodologies and work across a variety of disciplines, among which are the psychology of religion, sociology of religion, history of religions, hermeneutics and textual analysis, biographical analysis, feminist studies, queer and trans studies, film studies, philosophy of religion, mysticism and science, art criticism, postmodern theory, cultural studies, and anthropology of consciousness, among others. This interdisciplinarity has importance not only to our work as scholars, but also to our work as teachers and public educators. We post our current call, past sessions, a selection of past papers, as well as links in the field of mysticism to our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/aarmysticism/.