Online Program Book

Foucault’s notion of ‘regimes of truth’ sustains and transforms the analytic framework to approach his classic question of the relation between power and knowledge. The papers in this panel take up this crucial framing and its use for studies in religion, through direct engagements with the trajectory of his work as evinced by the BnF archive, contemporary analyses of political theology and the pressures/elaborations it gives to MF’s lenses, thematic journeys through the methodological and historical shifts of Foucault's project through the figure - of the devil - and reflections on the ‘political history of truth’ through the figure of a martyr.

How might theodicies serve to mask and marginalize structural violence? (either tacitly or explicitly) “Theodicy” here works as a category for arguments that defend religious or metaphysical claims from contradictions based on events of the actual world. We have selected proposals that articulate a theodicy, and then critically analyze how it functions to justify structural conditions such as inequalities, civil violence, xenophobia, political structures, or disparities of health, education, etc. Proposals may work with typical sources (e.g. texts, scriptures) or less-conventional sources (e.g. oral traditions, social media, laws, etc.). We wish to host a conversation that is typically on the margins of discourses in our field. This June, online session is created to have more voices contribute to this topic.

Featuring cutting edge scholarship this panel examines how conversion shapes individual and community identity in complex, often surprising ways.  Our first paper advances scholarship on the fraught nature of religious conversion under slavery in colonial Americas by examining representations of the conversion of Rose Binney Salter (1771), who was brought to Stockbridge by the family of prominent churchman Jonathan Edwards,  and eventually became a full member of the Stockbridge Church. Our second paper investigates the conversion career of Frederick Willis (1830–1914)  to argue that far from being a secret, esoteric religion, the Spiritualism that Willis embraced did not prevent his vigorous participation in liberal religious public sphere. Our third paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to focus on the Bene Menashem originally from northeastern India who migrated to Israel, where they must negotiate a fine line between integration and assimilation into Israeli society where their Jewishness is not always recognized. 

Each of the two papers in this session explores a distinct alternative or challenge to capitalism. One expounds on Indonesian independence leader Mohammad Hatta's vision of humanizing cooperatives, in conversation with du Bois and Polanyi. The other explicates a "working-class sacred" in Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," reading it with Heidegger and Weil. Taken together, the papers show the importance of theorizing class and anti-capitalism in plural geographic-cultural contexts, with interventions at plural structural positions, using plural methods, and drawing on plural theoretical streams.

Religious Education (RE) encompasses both teaching about religion and teaching from religion, making it a broad and diverse field. Consequently, approaches to RE vary significantly across the globe. The theorization of religions, beliefs, values, and their associated practices influences the pedagogical methods, learning objectives, curricular materials, and outcomes linked to their teaching, and vice versa. Moreover, these aspects are highly contextualized, reflecting local, national, and international priorities and norms. This session brings together papers that examine case studies from around the world to explore how schools in different countries across Europe, Africa, and Asia approach RE in its multiple forms. By examining these diverse cases and the contexts in which they are situated, these papers seek to shed light on the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which RE is approached, implemented, and taught within distinct cultural, societal, and educational frameworks.