Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Construction Unit
For 2025, the unit Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Construction (STTTC) will be offering two themed panels and one “open” session. The first themed panel will be an invited panel of scholars responding to the recently published book by Robert Paul Seesengood, American Standard: The Bible in U.S. Popular Culture (Wiley 2024). This session is closed to submission.
The second themed panel is a joint session with the SBL Religion, Theory, and the Bible section to co-sponsor a panel titled “Theoretically Animals,” which will explore animal studies and/in sacred texts but with a particular focus on theory. This panel is seeking work that engages with Animals and/in Sacred Texts, but does so via strong engagement with sharply informed critical theory—including but also going well beyond Agamben, Calarco, Derrida, Haraway, and others—in an effort to address "what is 'the Animal'". This panel will feature a combination of “open” applicants from both SBL and AAR memberships as well as some solicited works.
For the “open” session, we invite the submission of any papers (or even entire panels) which resonate with the general interests and mandate of STTTC. As always, STTTC is keenly interested in presenting innovative and exploratory work that engages with Critical Theory (broadly defined), Cultural Studies, and Continental Philosophy intersecting with either Sacred Texts (including, but by no means limited to Jewish and Christian writings) and Theology (ideally projects that touch on all these elements).
This Unit works with the unique intersection of sacred texts, contemporary theory, and theological construction. We call for papers engaged in contemporary constructive theology that think in innovative ways with sacred texts and contemporary biblical studies. We encourage dialogue between constructive theologians and biblical scholars from AAR and SBL, dealing with themes of interest to both academic disciplines in the wake of postmodernity. Topics range from theological hermeneutics to the value of theology, interrogations of our new theoretical contexts to constructive theological proposals, and from the use of sacred texts by contemporary theorists to the use of those contemporary theorists in constructive theology. This unit encourages and is receptive to creative proposals that work at the intersection of biblical studies, contemporary philosophy, theory, and theology.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ludwig Noya | ludwig.noya@vanderbilt… | - | View |
| Robert Seesengood, Albright College | rseesengood@albright.edu | - | View |