Online Program Book

This co-sponsored panel features musical Paganisms and their relationships to various nationalisms, ethnic identities and/or imagined communities. Anglo-American discourses of Paganism have shifted from libertine youth, aboriginal primitivism, eco-folk and folk-rolk nature veneration into harder-edged criticism and antinomian protests a part of general shifts and growth in new genres and recedence of older ones. Yet evidence indicates these are regional shifts to be compared and contrasted with Eastern European developments, particularly since the end of Communist statism. The composition of the panel reflects presenters' questions about 1) the usefulness of current critical theory concepts across Western and Eastern European divides 2) the degree to which Pagan musics have assumed enough cultural inertia to drive Pagan discourses as well as reflect them and 3) the conceptualization of these identities and discourses as a growing edge of _lore_, a body of emic somatic knowledge experienced through sonic immersion and 'imagined elsewheres.'

Together, the Ritual Studies Unit and the Open and Relational Theologies Unit will consider the practice, purpose, ethics, and theology of the open table, or a Christian eucharist that includes all and excludes none. Papers will analyze eucharistic practice from the perspective of ritual studies, considering how embodied activity provides an alternative means of knowing reality, then transforming that reality which has come to be better known. Papers will also consider the ethical implications of communal eating in a world dominated by agribusiness, in which the act of eating itself implicates one in global systems of privilege. Developing this theme, papers will address the open table as an act of resistance to social marginalization. Although mealtime has frequently been a time of exclusion, Jesus's teachings and practices suggest that sacred mealtime can express ethical universalism, thereby enacting the unconditional love of a cosmic God. 

The past several years have witnessed the remarkable recovery of participatory ontologies, a key conceptual element of the Platonic tradition. Participation constitutes a radically non-dualistic way of conceptualizing the relationship between God and creation, transcendence and immanence, the One in the many. It represents a theological and philosophical resource with a over 2,000 years history. This panel welcomes submissions that consider the metaphysics of participation in the thought of religions, individuals and movements from antiquity to the present. We also highly encourage the submission of papers relating to the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions generally, in both historical and constructive contexts. 

This session consists of a myriad of themes and methodologies in the field of Christian spirituality. Introducing for the first time in the unit is a paper on Artificial Intelligence, a prelude to the November full session on the same topic. A second paper explores how spirituality mediates mobility and structural immigration policies and processes. A third paper critically analyzes corporate spirituality: an advanced look at how spirituality emerges in the workplace.  

This panel explores the complex dynamics between social justice, identity, and ritual practices within contemporary Muslim communities. One paper delves into the experiences of an Iranian seminarian woman as she navigates the intersections of religious conservatism and secularism. Another paper examines the ongoing debate surrounding Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, questioning whether Islam should be considered a religion or a racial or ethnic group. It discusses how legal categories, biological essentialism, and dehumanization impact marginalized groups, complicating the articulation of the relationship between Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism in contemporary social justice discourse. A third paper shifts the focus to the devotional practices and mourning rituals of young Shiʿa Muslims in Tehran, Iran, exploring how these youths balance state-sponsored Islamism and secular neoliberal influences, demonstrating a nuanced engagement with individual agency, religious conservatism, and neoliberal logics. Together, these papers offer a thought-provoking exploration of how contemporary Muslims articulate and enact social justice.

How does Foucault help us to understand transformation – historical and individual – and religion? How does the transformation of subjectivity interact with the transformation of the political? The papers in this panel explore the way Foucault helps us to understand the relationship between the transformation of ‘self’ and the transformation of ‘world.’ More precisely, this panel explores the transformation of our frameworks for forming oneself “as a human or posthuman subject’ in a ‘posthuman world;’ the transformation of the rhetoric of the relation to self in patristic period between Rome and pastoral power; techniques of power and ethics within both political revolt and ongoing spiritual practice, religious, secular, or otherwise.

While Friedrich Schleiermacher’s place in the modern study of religion is well-established, his original contributions to aesthetics, and the close interconnections of aesthetics with religion in his writings, have received significantly less attention in English-language scholarship. This session draws upon the recent critical edition of Schleiermacher’s writings on aesthetics to explore his distinctive understanding of art and religion, and the various points of connection between his reflections on aesthetics and his better-known theological works. It centers especially on Schleiermacher’s novel reflections on music in both his theological writings and his writings on aesthetics, and on the significant links between music and religion in his thought.