Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Unit
With the presidential theme (Future/s) in mind, the Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Unit is seeking proposals for individual papers, panels, or roundtables on the following topics:
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Genealogies of the Future
In light of this year’s presidential theme, we call for papers that consider the range of ways in which the future has been theorized or critically interrogated within the study of religion and related fields. From Walter Benjamin’s and Jacques Derrida’s musings on the messianic to Jean-Luc Nancy’s on the “coming community,” the future has sometimes been configured as a site of utopian hope. More recently, our imaginaries of the future have arguably been overtaken by a sense of anxiety, as affective tone. The future is also often approached via a notion of risk informed by the increasing financialization of all sectors of society (e.g., through futures markets) and consequent rendering of the future as a zone for statistical prediction. To what extent does the precarity of our current discipline place us all in the mindset of stock speculators and financialized subjects? Are there other, and older, imaginaries of the future that hold moral and political power in our contemporary moment? Contact: J. Barton Scott (barton.scott@utoronto.ca) and Dana Logan (dwlogan@uncg.edu)
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Critical theories of religion and AI/machine intelligence
Many AI fever dreams of future intelligence end up in a place that seems similar to discourses in apophatic or negative theology, or scholastic theology, or Whitehead and process theology. We cannot possibly know how God or the future AGI thinks; how do we, as scholars of Religion, engage critically at this moment? We would welcome proposals drawing connections between apophatic theology and AI dreams of future minds and perhaps Adorno or Horkheimer developing a secular negative theology, for example. Contact: Suzanne van Geuns (vangeuns@wisc.edu)
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Anti-future/s
We invite proposals exploring Afro-pessimism and other intellectual traditions that explicitly position themselves against progress narratives/reachable utopias in religion. Contact: Suzanne van Geuns (vangeuns@wisc.edu)
Co-Sponsored Panels:
German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s theories of resonance and social acceleration in modernity have begun to influence the study of religion, and his recent writings that “democracy needs religion” offer a timely moment to consider his work for the sociology of religion. Rosa has written primarily in German, but his work has begun to be translated into English more recently, including key works like Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (2013) and Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World (2021). This possible co-sponsored session invites proposals that examine Rosa’s theories for the study of religion or employ his theories for original research. Contact: Dusty Hoesly (hoesly@ucsb.edu)
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Religious Thinkers as Co-Theorists: The Future of Critical Theory on Religion
Working off the 2026 AAR theme of "Future/s," this panel asks us to imagine a future of critical theory where religious intellectuals outside the academy are not simply subjects to be studied, but colleagues to think alongside. This panel aims to challenge the disciplinary norms that treat the academy as the primary creator of and authority on "theory" about religion. What new terms arise, which ideas fall out of favor, and what networks of relationships appear when we treat religious intellectuals as theorists of religion in their own right? This panel does not aim to valorize religious knowledge as somehow more authentic or true, but rather to extend to it the same interest, scrutiny, and care scholars provide to canonical theorists. What does the future of the field look like if we acknowledge that some of the most sophisticated theorists of religion have been studied, categorized, and provincialized as its objects? Papers could address questions such as: Based on your theorists' contributions, what new concepts are useful for the study of religion? What academic ideas may they critique or have affinity with? What can this approach contribute to the decolonization of academic knowledge? Contact: Matthew Drew (matthewdrew2028@u.northwestern.edu) or Dominique Townshend (dt80@columbia.edu)
The Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion (CTDR) Unit offers an interdisciplinary and international forum for analytical scholars of religion to engage the intersection of critical theory and methodology with a focus on concrete ethnographic and historical case studies. Critical theory draws on methods employed in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history, literary criticism, and political theory in order to bring into scrutiny all kinds of discourses on religion, spanning from academic to nonacademic and from religious to nonreligious. This Unit seeks to provide a forum in which scholars of religion from a wide range of disciplines can examine and question their disciplinary presuppositions. The work of this Unit can be placed under three main rubrics:
• Critical investigation of the categories generated and employed by the discourses on religion, such as experience, the sacred, ritual, and the various ‘isms’ that can be found in classic and contemporary studies of religion
• Analysis of new and neglected theorists and works central to the critical study of religion, including those produced in cognate fields such as anthropology, political science, or literary theory
• Theoretically-informed examination of elided and often neglected themes in religious studies, including class, race, gender, violence, legitimation, and the material basis of religion
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dana Logan, UNC Greensboro | dwlogan@uncg.edu | - | View |
| Katja Rakow, Utrecht University | k.rakow@uu.nl | - | View |