African Religions Unit

Our Unit encourages critical inquiry about religions originating and/or practiced in Africa. Proposals should go beyond description; they should critically engage the conceptual tools and methods employed in analysis. The steering committee will evaluate the merit of each proposal based on the clarity of its thesis, the strength of the evidence referenced, and the quality of the conclusions drawn from it in terms of both style and substance. For the 2026 Annual Meeting, we particularly invite papers as well as panel proposals that respond to the following themes relevant to any region of the African continent and its diverse religious cultures:

Back to the Future? Conceptions of Time in African Religions and Societies

In 1969, John Mbiti published his foundational text, African Religions and Philosophy, in which he articulated an African conception of time, most notably his controversial assertion that traditional African societies had no concept analogous to the distant “future”. In the over 50 years since Mbiti put forward this argument, he and his work have generated spirited debate and critique, particularly about African notions of time and, specifically, his conceptions of “the future”. We invite papers that interrogate African notions of time, broadly conceived, particularly as they might relate to notions of “the future,” but equally to notions of “the past” or “present,” as well as completely different ways of understanding and categorizing time. While responses to Mbiti and previous scholarship critiquing his position are very welcome, papers need not limit themselves to this debate, and papers on notions and conceptions of time in Islam and Christianity in Africa, as well as traditional religions, are very welcome. Potential topics could include, but are certainly not limited to, linear and cyclical notions of time, prophecy, divination and ritual, philology and African linguistic expressions of time, presence or absence of apocalyptic thought and millenarian movements in Africa, changes in notions of time in African societies, comparisons of notions of time across different African societies, and the relationship between time and space. In your submission, indicate whether you would like to present during the June (exclusively online) session or the November in-person conference in Denver, Colorado.

Sacred Arts, Sound, and AI: Knowledge Transmission, Ancestral Memory, and the Future of African Religions

Religious traditions are sustained through multiple forms of knowledge transmission, including sacred arts, ritual performance, and sound. These sensory modes—visual, material, and sonic—have long served as repositories for ancestral memory and religious authority, especially in African and diasporic religious contexts. This panel invites papers that investigate how sacred arts and religious soundscapes function as systems of knowledge transfer and how these systems are being transformed in the contemporary moment by digital technologies and artificial intelligence. We seek contributions that explore how music, chant, preaching, oral traditions, visual iconography, performance, and ritual objects transmit religious knowledge across generations. How are religious soundscapes and sacred arts implicated in preserving, mediating, or contesting ancestral knowledge? In what ways do sensory practices encode theological, ethical, and cosmological understandings beyond written texts?

The panel also foregrounds the growing impact of AI on religious knowledge production and circulation. How does the advent of AI alter longstanding modes of learning, authority, and memory within religious communities? What happens when ancestral knowledge—once transmitted orally, ritually, or artistically—is digitized, archived, or reinterpreted through algorithmic systems? Papers may address AI-assisted storytelling, music, visual arts, ritual instruction, or religious pedagogy, as well as the ethical and epistemological stakes of such transformations.

Methodologically and theoretically diverse approaches are welcome, including religious studies, anthropology, sound studies, media studies, digital humanities, and African studies. By bringing sensory traditions into conversation with emerging technologies, this panel aims to rethink how knowledge, ancestry, and the sacred are understood, preserved, and reimagined for the future. In your submission, indicate whether you would like to present during the June (exclusively online) session or the November in-person conference in Denver, Colorado.

The Future is African?: Youths, Religion, Politics and Mobility

Demographic projections suggest that by the close of the 21st century, the sub-Saharan African region will be home to almost half of the world’s young population and, globally, one in three people will be African. These projections emerge as religious consciousness in Africa continues to blossom amid significant quotidian life challenges. Within this matrix, African youths in recent decades have constructed realities replete with increased mobility and political engagement. Phenomena like Japa and Japada have emerged side by side with increased youth-led protests across African states such as Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Morocco, with transcontinental reverberations. This panel invites research at the intersection of religion, politics, mobility, and African youths that interrogate how religious vitality and political mobilization among Africa’s young population, both on the continent and in the diaspora, could be driving a global future that is African. How are African youths driving religious, political, and social change within Africa and around the world and how is this transforming the local and global experience of African religions, worldviews, and epistemologies? We seek papers that provide rich conceptual, methodological, and theoretical nuances relating, but not limited to the politics of mobility/immobility and temporal geographies; religious agency, collaboration, and generative power; gendered, racial, and generational politics; social media, online activism, and digital transnationalism; immigration policies and Euro-American bureaucracies vs spiritual warfare and religious specialists; material religion, ‘sacred remittances’ and moral economy; violence, religious, and political extremism; hybridity, lived religion, and material culture. In your submission, indicate whether you would like to present during the June (exclusively online) session or the November in-person conference in Denver, Colorado.

Indigenous Epistemologies of the Future: Authority, Initiation, and the Living Dead

African and African diaspora indigenous traditions rely heavily on ancestral knowledge to find meaning in existence. Yet, as these traditions navigate a changing world, the mechanisms of transmission are under pressure. How is the "future" of religious authority being constructed? In traditions often governed by secrecy, initiation, and oral transmission, how is knowledge sustained when practitioners face new tangible realities such as migration and displacement? 

This panel moves beyond the content of tradition to examine how religious knowledge is authorized and preserved for the future.  We invite submissions that explore themes at the intersection of knowledge, survival, and transfer. How are indigenous systems of knowledge transfer adapting to modern constraints and opportunities? What is the future of initiation? To whom does the task of safeguarding tradition fall in the face of migration and displacement? This panel will be co-sponsored by the African Religions Unit, Global Critical Philosophy of Religion Unit, and African Diaspora Religions Unit.

African and South Asian Religions

African and South Asian religions have been engaged in dialogue and exchange for centuries—yet their historical and present interconnectedness remains a lacuna in Euro-American academic scholarship. This panel attempts to rectify this omission by bringing together the work of scholars of African and South Asian religions. Studying African and South Asian traditions in tandem promises not only to bring new insight into each area of focus, but also to offer an occasion for reconsidering the foundational question of what defines a tradition as ‘African,’ ‘South Asian,’ or both. We welcome submissions on the history of Hindu and South Asian Muslim communities in Africa; the history of African Muslim communities in South Asia (such as the siddi community); contemporary interactions between African and South Asian religious communities; and the question of where the boundary lies between African and South Asian traditions in those contexts where the two coexist. This panel will be co-sponsored by the African Religions Unit and South Asian Religions Unit.