Online Program Book

This is the preliminary program for the 2024 in-person Annual Meeting, hosted with the Society for Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA - November 23-26. Pre-conference workshops and many committee meetings will be held November 22. If you have questions about the program, contact annualmeeting@aarweb.org. All times are listed in local/Pacific Time.


	M23-516 Fortress Press Theme: Fortress Press Reception Saturday, 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM Marriott Marquis-Pacific Ballroom 15 (First Floor) Come celebrate Fortress Press authors and their latest books at our annual reception. Connect with old and new colleagues, meet our editors, and enjoy an evening relaxing together. Wine, beer, and non-alcoholic drinks served.
	M24-100 Church of Christ Scholars and Friends Assembly Theme: Church of Christ Scholars and Friends Assembly Sunday, 7:00 AM - 8:30 AM Convention Center-10 (Upper Level West) Please join us for this annual worship service.
	M24-101 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Theme: Gordon-Conwell Alumni Breakfast Sunday, 7:00 AM - 8:30 AM Marriott Marquis-Marriott Grand 2 (Lobby Level) Join President Scott Sunquist and your fellow Gordon-Conwell alumni to catch up with friends and meet other alumni you don't know yet. In addition to breakfast and time to connect, we'll worship together and hear seminary updates from Dr. Sunquist, Provost Dr. Seong Park, Deans, and other faculty members. Alumni, spouses, and prospective students are invited to attend.
	A24-100 American Academy of Religion Theme: American Academy of Religion Annual Business Meeting Sunday, 7:30 AM - 8:45 AM Convention Center-1B (Upper Level West) Claudia Schippert, American Academy of Religion, Presiding Jin Y Park, American University, Washington, D.C., Presiding Leela Prasad, Brown University, Presiding Join the AAR Board of Directors for a brief business meeting.
	M24-109 Biblical Theology Bulletin Editors Theme: Annual meeting of the Biblical Theology Bulletin Editors Sunday, 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Cobalt 502B (Fifth Level) .
	M24-102 Center of Theological Inquiry Theme: Center of Theological Inquiry Breakfast Reception Sunday, 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM Grand Hyatt-Gaslamp CD (Second Level - Seaport Tower) CTI Members, friends, guests, and anyone interested in our interdisciplinary research program on theology and global concerns are cordially invited to attend our annual breakfast reception.
	M24-103 Temple University Theme: 2024 Tudor Alumni Breakfast Sunday, 7:45 AM - 9:00 AM Marriott Marquis-Rancho Sante Fe Rooms (North Tower - Lobby Level) This is an annual event that celebrates Temple University's Department of Religion, our alumni, our current graduate students, former students and our faculty. Friends of the program are all welcome!
	P24-101 Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion Theme: Wabash Center Creative Writing Session Sunday, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Grand Hyatt-Coronado D (Fourth Level) For those hoping to broaden the reach and creativity of their scholarship, this session will be an opportunity to learn more about creative writing as a scholarly genre and practice! Join us as we share approaches, techniques, and generative writing exercises. This will be an interactive gathering intended to widen academic settings.
	S24-109/A24-141 AAR's Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit and SBL's Biblical Exegesis from Eastern Orthodox Perspectives Unit Theme: Jewish-Christian Relations from Orthodox Christian Perspectives Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 314 (Third Level) Mike Azar, Society of Biblical Literature, Presiding This session seeks to widen Jewish-Christian dialogue by considering how Orthodox exegetical traditions, liturgy, history, contemporary thought, and ongoing political experience, especially in the Middle East, can and should affect not only Orthodox Christianity’s own relationship to Jews and Judaism, but also its relationship to Jewish-Christian dialogue more broadly. Mike Azar, Society of Biblical Literature Orthodox Christianity and Modern Jewish-Christian Relations: A History Abstract Using unpublished archives from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva and the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy, this paper relates the history of Orthodox Christianity’s initial entrance into and ongoing place in Jewish-Christian dialogue. After briefly recounting the post-WWII origins of modern Jewish-Christian dialogue, from which Orthodox Christians were almost entirely absent, we examine the story of direct attempts by the WCC, primarily in the early 1970s, to fill the “Orthodox gap.” These attempts, however, generally failed, not because Orthodox representatives at the time were resistant to dialogue with Jews per se, but because they were resistant to pursuing such a dialogue with the same political and theological assumptions with which it had unfolded elsewhere. In fact, around the same time, Orthodox Christians, under the sponsorship of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, began their own bilateral relationship with Jews, outside of the auspices of the WCC. Surveying the history of these bilateral meetings, from their beginnings in 1976 to the most recent in 2022, this paper concludes with an analysis of what the “official” Orthodox Christian-Jewish bilateral relationship has thus far achieved and what it still lacks. Edith M. Humphrey, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Avoiding Scylla and Charybdis --Orthodox Responses to the Jewish People Abstract . Alexey Somov, Universität Regensburg The Martyrdom of St Judas Cyriacus as a Christian anti-Jewish Rhetoric with Jewish Elements Abstract . Thomas Hoerner, University of Notre Dame He Arose as a Lion Cub: The Lamentations of Great and Holy Saturday as Exegesis of Israel's Warrior Abstract . Geoffrey Ready, University of Toronto Renewing Orthodox Christian Faith, Worship, and Life through Jewish Dialogue Abstract While Orthodox Christian-Jewish dialogue often and necessarily centres on elements of anti-Judaism within Christian preaching, teaching, and worship, this paper focuses on some of the enriching insights that can be gained through this engagement. This paper will address three broad themes: (1) the recovery of the full narrative of God and Israel — and a truer christotelic rather than a limited christocentric typology; (2) the illumination and deeper understanding of existing Orthodox Christian liturgical and faith practices through a Jewish perspective and interpretation; and (3) the retrieval of a more vital sense of living patristic tradition reflecting the dynamic “Talmudic” approach to seeking truth through dialogue, debate, and the application of heuristic methods. Through engagement and dialogue with the Jewish community, Orthodox Christians stand to gain fresh insights into the living tradition of the church, and rediscover neglected aspects of faith and practice.
	A24-103 African Religions Unit Theme: Religion, Politics, and Elections in Africa Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-3 (Upper Level West) Following the recent attempted and successful coups in West Africa, this panel seeks papers that address the numerous ways religion and politics are intertwined in Africa. With growing concern about the democratic and electoral processes around the world, what role have, do, or should African religious traditions play in politics? Are there lessons the rest of the world can learn from the ways religious traditions in Africa have engaged with or distanced themselves from politics and elections? Although headlines frequently focus on examples of religious and political violence, the panel actively invites papers that focus on nonviolent engagement in political and religious spheres as well, or interrogate the violence/nonviolence binary that is often superimposed on social and political movements. The panel also encourages papers that are attentive to issues related to the differences between traditional and modern/post-colonial political systems, the complicated nature of “secularism(s)” in African societies, and the interplay between religious authority and figures and political authority and figures. Dorcas Dennis, University of North Carolina At Wilmington Pot-Breaking and Overseas Travels: Indigenizing Ritual Models in Ghanaian Pentecostal Spaces Abstract Ghanaian Pentecostal agents who emphasize ritual praxis for migrants live in two worlds as far as questions of socio-religious capital are concerned. One world is informed by a quest to internationalize, have diaspora membership, engage in overseas itinerant missions, and have a global-modern presence. The other is the efforts to indigenize their ritual praxis to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities of local clientele who may become tomorrow’s diaspora members and distinguish themselves from the European mission churches in Ghana. The intense competition in Ghana’s volatile Pentecostal religious field is engendering an open enlisting of indigenous religious models by churches in a bid to gain an edge over other competitors. The paper involves fieldwork research among two Ghanaian Pentecostal churches in exploring ways the Pentecostals deploy a tapestry of indigenous models and symbols to appeal to the indigenous sensibilities to negotiate socio-religious capital in the Ghanaian religious landscape thereby indigenizing Christianity. Grace Nwamah, University of Leeds The politics of religion and Nigeria’s future: Assessing the controversy around the amended Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020 Abstract This paper explores the intricate interactions of politics, religion, and law in shaping contemporary Nigeria. The focal point of the inquiry is the amended Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA 2020), which eventually turned to be a bone of contention that has sparked heated discussions and differing viewpoints. The contentious issues surrounding CAMA 2020 centre on its clauses pertaining to religious organizations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with some key actors, it examines the responses and reactions of Christian and Muslim leaders. These leaders shared their opinions about the new law, which some analysts describe as a deliberate attack on faith-based organisations (FBOs). The findings underpin the tension that exists between Islam and Christianity and the ways in which they relate to and view the state. It also highlights the mistrust and suspicion that characterise the relationship between the government and the people. The CAMA 2020 is a segment of broader tensions in determining the future course of Nigeria in terms of its interaction with religion and politics. Rode Molla, Virginia Theological Seminary Decolonizing Identity Politics Through Ethiopians Lived Religion Abstract Though the Ethiopian contemporary modern governments have tried to divide state and religion, Ethiopians have maintained Covenant thinking to unite religious, political, and social principles. Covenant thinking and cultural and religious relationships created a unified Ethiopia, beyond their ethnic differences, resulting not only in religious unity but also political unity in the Ethiopian context. The surplus, or lived history, of covenant thinking has created values, social and cultural identity, and national consciousness for Ethiopians. Key Words: Identity Politics, Lived Religion, Covenant Thinking, Greater Ethiopian Discourse James Kwateng-Yeboah, Saint Mary's University, Halifax Seeking Canada, Finding Africa: Unravelling the Identity Formations of continental African Christian immigrants in Canada Abstract This paper examines the motivations underlying the rise and expansion of African Christian immigrant communities in Canada. It focuses on three churches, two Ghanaian and one Nigerian, situated in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario. The paper explores how these communities navigate intricate identities as ‘Canadian,’ ‘African,’ and ‘Christian,’ the implications of these identities on their integration into Canadian society, and their position within the global Christian landscape. This paper argues that African and more broadly, Black-initiated Christian communities in Canada continue to experience marginalization, existing on the periphery of the respectability enjoyed by the historic French Roman Catholic and English Protestant establishments. This marginalization is evident not only in the lack of public recognition but also in the relegation of their religious communities to the margins of Canadian scholarship. Despite this marginalization, African-initiated churches challenge stereotypes, assert multiple identities, and navigate the complexities of cultural preservation and religious expression with resilience.
	A24-104 Anthropology of Religion Unit Theme: Theorizing Secular Sensibilities Through Ethnography Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-30C (Upper Level East) Rebekka King, Middle Tennessee State University, Presiding This panel extends current theoretical discussions in the anthropology of secularism regarding the subtle ways that secularism(s) shape social life, including bodies, to consider “secular sensibilities.” Put differently, as ethnographers, how can we capture the sensorial, bodily and affective dimensions of secularism? The first paper by Oliphant situates secular sensibilities in two carnivals in France, pointing to local and contextual theorization. The second paper by Selby and Barras takes up ethnography with French nonreligious immigrants to Montreal and Toronto, Canada and compares their emotional engagements with the secular sensibilities they encounter in public schools.The third paper by Mossière draws on fieldwork with energy-based movements in Montréal, Canada to consider her participants' cultivation of secular-sensing scientific bodies. The panel concludes with a paper by Amir-Moazami, who examines secular sensibilities in contemporary Europe through her fieldwork and anthropologically informed discourse analysis of securitization. Elayne Oliphant, New York University A Carnival of Possibilities: Cultivating the Secular by Opposing Christian Hegemony Abstract In this paper, I reflect on the tradition of Carnival in France as a means of cultivating secular sensibilities. Secular sensibilities are often formed in conversation—at times antagonistic—with religious sensibilities. I compare two Carnivals that took place over the fall and winter of 2023-24 in France. Both were used to expand the sensibilities and actors recognized in French landscapes and histories. While Carnivals are not necessarily spaces in which gods and spirits are absent, I understand these Carnivals to be secular due to the context of their occurrence, as both pushed back against articulations of Catholic dominance. Rather than viewing the religious and secular as two pre-existing and always-distinctive set of sensibilities, I argue for understanding both as local and contextual. It was precisely by opposing hegemonic Catholic claims over space and memory that these Carnivals may be understood as aimed at the cultivation of secular sensibilities. Jennifer A. Selby, Memorial University of Newfoundland Amélie Barras, York University Québécois and Ontarian Secular Sensibilities: The Case of French Immigrants’ and Canadian Public and Private Schools Abstract Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with first-generation French immigrants to Montréal and Toronto, as well as anthropological literature on secularism and secular sensibilities (Fadil 2009; Barras 2017; Amir-Moazami 2022; Selby 2022), this paper examines how longstanding provincial, linguistic and cultural distinctions between Québec and Ontario are articulated by our interlocutors by paying particular attention to the emotions they express around the education of their children in daycares and schools: whether disgust, joy, unease. We include audio excerpts from our interviews (for which we received permission in our ethics application) and conclude by drawing on theoretical work on whiteness in France and Canada (Ahmed 2007; Bilge 2013; Beaman 2019; Lépinard 2020) to theorize its centrality as a secular sensibility. Geraldine Mossiere, “Energy”: How Spiritualities’ Use of Psychological Language Frame Secular Sensing Bodies Abstract Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among spiritual energy-based movements, Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness and 5 rhythms, this paper examines psychological and psychosomatic approaches that have recently blossomed in the wellness industry by integrating spiritual teachings and practices oriented towards self-transformation. As part of the “psychologization of society”, these self-development movements display a shared reliance on scientifically informed language and on the concept of “energy”. My observations show that the ritualized motion of the body as well as the guided awareness of sensations are conducive to heightened emotional releases that are meant to restore the circulation of energy in the morphic spaces where they occur. In this setting, emotions are understood as embodied thoughts. Given that these deeply cathartic experiences are framed as an expansion of consciousness, I argue that the combination of energy and consciousness concur to shape the secular sensing body. Schirin Amir-Moazami, Freie Universität Berlin Islamism Prevention as a Secular Practice Abstract Throughout the last two decades preventive measures against “Islamism” have gradually expanded across Europe and in conjunction with the US-lead global war on terror. Critical scholarship on prevention politics have mainly focused on the mechanisms of securitization and its intrusive characteristics (cf. Fadil, De Koening, Ragazzi 2019; Marquardt und Qasem 2022; Said and Fouad 2018). In my paper I build up on these critiques while arguing that the underlying security dispositive is animated by what Luca Mavelli has called the “secular episteme” (Mavelli 2012). Dwelling both on discourse analysis and fieldwork, I show that politics of prevention are above all based on hegemonic, mostly unspoken and unproblematized understandings of Islam as proper “religion”, and Islamism as its improper politicized deviation. The classificatory system of knowledge production undergirding such distinctions are predicated on secular assumptions of successfully accomplished separations between “religion” and “politics” and on secular sensibilities which guide the predictive lines between “pure Islam” and “dangerous Islamism”. Responding Paul Bramadat, University of Victoria Business Meeting Eric Hoenes Del Pinal, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Presiding Jennifer A. Selby, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Presiding
	A24-105 Applied Religious Studies Committee Theme: What’s a Religion or Theology PhD to Do? A Workshop for Graduate Students, Administrators, and Faculty Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 300 (Third Level) SueJeanne Koh, University of California, Irvine, Presiding This workshop invites graduate students, administrators, and faculty to imagine religion and theology PhD programs in ways that prepare students for diverse careers after the PhD. It will operate on the premise that programs can employ a more “agnostic” approach to career outcomes and prepare students for both faculty and non-faculty positions. The workshop will introduce practical resources for career exploration, discuss both explicit and implicit challenges to diverse careers, share both low- and high-effort strategies for professional development within programs, and suggest ways that our guild can adapt strategies modeled in other academic societies. This is an opportunity for honest conversation, ideas exchange, and to create a learning community. Panelists Audrey Price, Aspen Institute Tiffany Puett, Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, Austin, TX
	A24-106 Arts, Literature, and Religion Unit Theme: The Embodied Artist and The Artist as Text Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-7B (Upper Level West) Cia Sautter, University of St. Thomas, Presiding This session considers the embodied knowledge of the artist and artwork. Embodied art in papers presented include dance, theatre, and literature, with a discussion of theological and religious discovery inherent in the embodied act of creating art. Papers deal specifically with Cormac MacCarthy, Religion, and Theatre; Dancing as Transformational Knowing in Christian Faith; Queer Sacramentality in Paul Taylor’s "Beloved Renegade"; Embodied Knowledge and Tibetan Buddhist Tantric Dance (Cham); Embodying the “Correspondent Subjective” within Religion and Literature. A small theatrical performance is included. Leif Bergerud, Columbia University The Last Fire: Cormac McCarthy, Religion, and Embodied Performance Abstract Drawing from the work of William Robert (Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance), Cia Sautter (The Performance of Religion: Seeing the sacred in the Theatre), Mark C. Taylor (After God), Talal Asad (Formations of the Secular) and other scholars, this paper offers a firsthand record of the experience of adapting and directing the first staged adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's final novel Stella Maris. This adaptation that also includes roughly 20 minutes of original film (in part inspired by McCarthy's penultimate novel The Passenger, which overlaps with Stella Maris) shot on location by the director (who is also the author and presenter of this paper) and a small team in Montana, Arizona, the Yukon, and the Boundary Waters of nothern Minnesota. Those in attendance will learn about how the process of adapting, directing, and performing the play revealed powerful and subtle insights at the intersection of performance, philosophy and religion. Yat Hei Fong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Dancing as Transformational Knowing in Christian Faith: “Revelations” with Fourfold Knowing Event by James E. Loder Abstract This paper investigates how the dance piece “Revelations”, a choreographic masterpiece created by American choreographer Alvin Ailey in the early 1960s, demonstrates a theological knowing process under the framework of Fourfold Knowing Event by James E. Loder, a practical theologian. In this study, the dance “Revelations” is analyzed as an “assemblage” under New Materialism, which presented a distributed view of agency. From this, the relationality between the living and non-living actors, like dancers, audience, stage environment, music, and culture, also emerges. This paper argues that the dance performance in “Revelations” facilitates a theologically transformational knowing process that helps people encounter the Holy Spirit in the face of the void constituted by the conflict between the living world and the self. This paper thus seeks to enrich scholarship by probing the relationship between dance, an aesthetic art form, and theological knowing through the close study of a twentieth-century masterpiece. Constantine Lignos, Columbia University Dancing Divinities: Embodied Knowledge and Tibetan Buddhist Tantric Dance (Cham) Abstract This paper looks at Tibetan Buddhist tantric ritual dances called cham to consider how they are co-realized through the interplay of dance manuals called cham yig and through the bodies of dancing monks in order to to think about how physical acts of religious piety can be studied in a way that considers both written and embodied textual traditions. It argues that the dancing body becomes an implement which inscribes in space the text of ritual choregraphy, the language of the divinities. How can contemporary theories and methods in the study of religion help us think about the body as a legitimate site of knowledge production and dissemination? How can we conduct social and cultural analyses not through disembodied intellectual knowledge, but through the integration of embodied religious practices? Dugan McGinley, Rutgers University, New Brunswick Dancing Bodies, Walt Whitman, and the Gloria: Queer Sacramentality in Paul Taylor’s "Beloved Renegade" Abstract Paul Taylor’s "Beloved Renegade" is a modern dance choreographed to the music of Francis Poulenc’s "Gloria." Even though the words and music are liturgical, Taylor’s choreography is based on the life of Walt Whitman, a poet who largely eschewed traditional religion. Building on this unexpected combination, this paper examines the conversation between the liturgical text/music and the choreography in this piece as an example of the Catholic sacramental imagination. The "queerness" of the piece transforms a prayer of praise and petition into a celebration of incarnational theology. Sean Dempsey, University of Arkansas Words Made Flesh: Embodying the “Correspondent Subjective” within Religion and Literature Abstract This talk explores the implications of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s view that both scripture and literature can serve as mediums that deeply affect and orient readers’ postures of attention and their ways of navigating within a wider world of concern. Critiquing the bibliolatrous, Coleridge advocates for a projective method of reading that enables reciprocal exchange, one where subjective experience becomes objectively available through its correspondence with the figures of Scripture, and where objective truths can become subjectively realized. After focusing on how and why Coleridge’s model of scriptural reading works I then consider what this model can illuminate about religion and literature more generally. A key consideration will be on how the dynamics of Coleridge’s model relates to a broader trajectory of participatory ritual, scripture, and rhetoric that can traced back to debates concerning theurgy in Neoplatonism and forward to the possibilities that have emerged within various strands of contemporary Ecopoetics and Ecotheology.
	A24-107 Black Theology Unit Theme: Black Theology, Violence, & the Absurdity of Hope Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-5B (Upper Level West) Jawanza Eric Clark, Manhattan College, Presiding This session will explore varieties of antiBlack violence, and the viablity of Black theological imagination in response. Considerations will range from scripture to slave rebellion; spiritual violence in the Black churches and the violence of ideological conscription in the contemporary Movement for Black Lives. Special attention will be given to the complex dialectic of hopelessness against hope amidst the flesh and blood realities of Black life. Julius Crump, Like Chocolate for Water: Liberation from Ideological Conscription Abstract Prior to the decline of BLM, scholars who attempted to embrace group differentiation and resist capital engaged in genealogical ideology critique. Keeanga Yahmatta Taylor argues that BLM should aim for liberation while Christopher Lebron argues that BLM is based in a tradition of equal dignity that values racial progress. Although liberation is a desirable goal, Taylor’s rich historical account avoids proposing it as a method. Cone's black particularity offers ways to use Taylor’s differentiating aim as motivation, not merely a teleology, and politicize Lebron’s appreciation of dignity. Locating a multi-causal account of liberation in particular practices eschews ideological capture by providing chocolate for the water in which protesting publics swim; that is, particularity for ideology. This paper argues that black particularity illustrates a practice of existential discovery that resists ideological conscription. Cone views radical practices that employ collective rage and grief as more meaningful than the instigation of such processes. Indhira Udofia, University of North Carolina At Greensboro Specters of Subjugation: A Sociotheological Exploration of Religious and Spiritual Violence within Black Church Abstract Despite expanding the theological frameworks of embodiment, sexuality, and incarnation, the reality is that the inner logic of particular Black Church spaces requires or invites communal violence as a conduit to receive the work of God’s action in the world. Stemming from a broader exploration of the impact of exposure to religious violence on African American Millennials and Generation Z in Black Church spaces, this paper attempts to explore the sociopolitical and theological implications of practices of violence within the ecclesiology of the Black Church. Using results from a digital ethnographic analysis and interviews from Black gender and sexual minorities who experienced religious violence and trauma within Black Church contexts, this paper seeks to explore how explorations of Black ecclesiology must engage in trauma-informed and healing-centered theoethics to stop the occurrence of religious and spiritual violence within the Black Church spaces, specifically with Black gender and sexual minorities. Wesley Williams, The Interdenominational Theological Center Vengeance is Mine, Thus Said the Lord: A Historical and Theological Analysis of Violence and Marginalized Culture Abstract The notion that Jesus was a nonviolent leader must be critically reexamined in a theological context. A lack of written evidence of Jesus perpetrating violent acts does not mean he lacked violent intent. In fact, in his trial and his conviction for being the King of the Jews implies violent intent but, however, was unsuccessful with the insurrection. Similarly, Denmark Vesey, an insurgent against slavery in the United States, led a failed attempt insurrection and was tried and sentenced to death for his intent of violence. Using Denmark’s story as the methodology, this paper argues that Jesus attempted to instigate a violent insurrection, but did not succeed, resulting in his death for “treasonous” acts against his oppressor. If, according to Black Theology, God is on the side of the oppressed and Jesus’s liberation from Roman oppression could have involved violence, should a liberation theology support freedom through violence? Kimani Francois, Claremont Graduate University Akayla Lewis, Claremont Graduate University The struggle for Black hope?: Black nihilism, Black theology, and the politics of the absurd Abstract In this essay, we examine a contemporary religious movement, The Gathering: A Womanist Church that is centered around a theology of justice in action with an emphasis on a broad-minded belief system. These religious movements are intentionally less focused on doctrinal statements and correct beliefs for assimilation. Instead, this new movement is within the tradition of religion in action: the act of fighting for justice is the doctrine. We contextualize the dialectics of Black nihilism and Black theology through an appeal to the absurd in the face of hope.We argue that Black theology provides avenues to hope through a dialectic with Black nihilism. Black theology is one answer to Black nihilism. In turn, Black nihilism is a response to a failed Black theology of the past. Contemporary Black religious movements are a response and have made an epistemological and ontological turn to real notions of hope, meaning, and love. Business Meeting Eboni Marshall Turman, Yale University, Presiding Jawanza Eric Clark, Manhattan College, Presiding
	A24-108 Body and Religion Unit Theme: Bioenhancement Technologies and the Vulnerable body Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Cobalt 500 (Fifth Level) Devan Stahl, Baylor University, Presiding The participants in this roundtable all agree that minority perspectives yield new insights into biomedical enhancements, particularly when persons are vulnerable to health disparities, including persons with disabilities, and persons of color. The presenters for this round table come from different denominational backgrounds and represent different minority perspectives and they bring those perspectives to bear on questions of bioenhancement. Each presenter will briefly (5-7 minutes) highlight how they have come to evaluate particular bioenhanmcent technologies using insights from their religious traditions and minority communities. Presenters will describe how their theological methods and ontological suppositions reflect on the distinctiveness of human creatureliness in relation to technology and what difference bioenhancement might make for our conceptions of vulnerability. Panelists Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University Wylin Dassie Wilson, Harvard University Adam Pryor, Bethany College Terri Laws, University of Michigan, Dearborn Business Meeting Gwendolyn Gillson, Illinois College, Presiding Wesley Barker, Mercer University, Presiding
	A24-109 Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Unit and Buddhist Philosophy Unit Theme: Gender Metaphysics in Buddhist Doctrines and Narratives Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-6F (Upper Level West) Barbra R. Clayton, Mount Allison University, Presiding The panel explores how to make sense of gender and sexuality that does not explain gender away but envisions gender as a crucial category in Buddhist doctrines and narratives. Coming from religious studies, philosophy and literature, scholars in this panel re-read the canon from diverse perspectives for a new imagination of gender and sexuality that can contribute to discussions on social justice for combating dominance and promoting inclusion. As such, these panelists initiate a critical-constructive reflection: critically, they provide a methodological intervention on approaches that de-gender doctrinal philosophy, dismiss differences in sentient beings’ lived experiences, and disassociate philosophy from other disciplines in Buddhist studies (e.g., literature, anthropology, and social history); and constructively, they propose to cross disciplinary boundaries in cherishing narratives as resources for re-gendering the Buddhist discourses of consciousness, body, karma, and cosmos. Together, these scholars strive to expand the shared horizons of philosophy, literature, feminism, and queer studies. Sherice Ngaserin, Yale-NUS College Trying to eat the air: Vasubandhu’s Objections to Vaibhāṣika Gender Metaphysics Abstract It is often assumed that Abhidharma Buddhists hold the same essentialist view of gender due to their shared belief in the existence of material sex indriyas that are powerful over the arising of sex characteristics and gendered behaviour. In my paper, I demonstrate based on passages in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya that this is not the case. While Vasubandhu agrees with his Vaibhāṣika interlocutors that the sex indriyas are material in nature, he draws on Sautrāntika and Vijñānavādin arguments to provide several objections to the Vaibhāṣika account. He proceeds to redefine the sex indriyas and reduce the scope and nature of their causal powers, resulting in a deflationary account of sex and gender. Lu Huang, Temple University Metaphysical Realism and Queerness in Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma Abstract This discussion will explore how the metaphysical realism of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma affects their understanding of the third gender and contributes to the perception of queerness as a vitiated form of incarnation. The dualistic and hierarchical concept of gender, which is solely defined through corporeal traits that are considered in the context of metaphysical realism, influences how queerness is perceived. Within this context, gender faculties (puruṣendriya and strīndriya) are examined on an atomic level and considered to be independent of the mind. The disposition (āśaya) of queer individuals is pre-determined by their physical base (āśraya). Queer corporeality is considered to lack the steadfast will and mental sharpness that are necessary to obtain enlightenment. Exploring the role of metaphysical realism in the formation of the heteronormative and condescending attitude toward queerness within Sarvāstivāda can help us to better appreciate later Mahāyāna developments such as Yogācāra. Jingjing Li, Leiden University Eroding Sexism with the Yogācāra Dialectics of Gender Abstract In this presentation, I explore how we can expand contemporary gender metaphysics by drawing on Yogācāra philosophy. With a focus on the writings of Xuanzang (c. 602–664) and his disciple Kuiji (632–682), I investigate how the Yogācāra theory of consciousness-only can be read as a gendered account of non-duality that informs a critical and constructive reconceptualization of what gender/sex is. As I will argue, Yogācārins like Xuanzang and his disciples present gender/sex as an embodied performance that sentient beings can enact in different ways. While regular sentient beings have been conditioned to enact their gender/sex in an essentialist manner, they can also collaborate to re-enact their illusory gender for problematizing dominance. I refer to such a gender metaphysics as the Yogācāra dialectics of gender that does not explain gender away but rather furnishes sentient beings, especially the practitioners, a set of vocabularies in disposal for promoting social justices. Adeana McNicholl, Vanderbilt University Gender and Sexuality in this World and the Next: Human/Non-Human Relationships in Preta Narratives Abstract This paper examines the ways that stories about semi-divine pretas operate within several tensions between Brahmanical gender norms, the patriarchal householder society, the ideals of the celibate sangha, and the everyday gendered realities of men and women. It focuses on tales in which semi-divine pretas engage in sexual relationships with human partners. Following Amy Langenberg’s suggestion that scholars employ a feminist hermeneutic that attends to alternate viewpoints of female sexuality, this paper pushes beyond a conclusion that preta narratives attempt to relegate gender transgression to the realm of the non-human by comparing the preta to female domesticity and beauty. While these narratives attempt to regulate women’s sexual capacity, the preta world itself, as a realm of distinctly unregulated female sexuality, operates in tension with the text’s own normative frameworks. As such, these tales open possibilities for a transformative space that contests the patriarchal heteronormative imperatives of the marriage economy.
	A24-110 Chinese Religions Unit and Indian and Chinese Religions in Dialogue Unit Theme: Bodies and technologies of reproduction Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire MN (Fourth Level) Matthew King, University of California, Riverside, Presiding This roundtable brings together scholars working on a wide range of materials, cultures and periods to discuss the body and technologies of reproduction. The reproductive body is the site and technology of much religious and spiritual practice in East and South Asia. Narratives of embryology—whether physiological and saṃsāric or spiritual and transcendent—inform such practices. Bodily practices are often understood in relation to reproduction and may directly impact procreation. This roundtable focuses on how the reproductive body informs religious practice and narratives of bodily procreation. The roundtable features contributions on the placenta as the source of mortality in Shangqing Daoism, embryogenesis narratives in Epic and Purāṇic literature, the Daoist body as a self-contained site of asexual reproduction, the Indian alchemical Rasaratnākara on embryo development and procreation, spiritual embryology in haṭha yoga, embryology and cosmology in Chinese female alchemy, and childlessness and ontogenesis in Bengali (Baul) songs of sādhanā. Panelists Sasha Makarova, Harvard University Dominic Steavu-Balint, University of California, Santa Barbara Patricia Sauthoff, Hong Kong Baptist University Ruth Westoby, SOAS University of London Elena Valussi, Loyola University, Chicago Responding Fabrizio Pregadio,
	A24-111 Christian Systematic Theology Unit and Religion and Disability Studies Unit Theme: Revisiting the Disabled God: A Constructive Conversation with Lisa Powell Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-20BC (Upper Level East) Hanna Reichel, Princeton Theological Seminary, Presiding . Panelists Willie J. Jennings, Yale University Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia Natalia Marandiuc, United Lutheran Seminary Miriam Spies, Toronto School of Theology Amos Yong, Fuller Theological Seminary Responding Lisa Powell, St. Ambrose University Business Meeting David Scott, Independent Scholar, Presiding Sarah Jean Barton, Duke University, Presiding
	A24-112 Comparative Studies in Religion Unit Theme: CANCELLED: Risk in Religion: Personal Safety, Power, and Courage in Religious Studies Research Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-33A (Upper Level East) Sam Shuman, University of VIrginia, Presiding This roundtable begins a discussion on the role of risk in religious studies. Religion is risky business, and scholars of religion are prone to taking on disproportionate forms of risk that can be difficult to manage. This roundtable gathers together an experienced group of interdisciplinary scholars who have conducted “risky” research in a range of comparative religious communities across Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. Together they will reflect on challenges “in the field” and moral dilemmas that emerged during the process of data analysis, constructing critical and humanizing narratives, and presenting their research to diverse public audiences. Participants will discuss their research on clerical sex abuse in Catholic institutions, Orthodox Jewish queer/trans religious and ex-religious life, reproductive health in the United States among Muslim communities, and Israel’s theocratic right-wing. Panelists Shira Schwartz, Northwestern University Rachel Feldman, Dartmouth College Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University Zahra Ayubi, Dartmouth College
	A24-113 Comparative Theology Unit Theme: Humility, Truth, and Pneuma: Exercises in Buddhist-Christian Comparative Theology Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-32A (Upper Level East) Axel Marc Oaks Takacs, Seton Hall University, Presiding This panel presents three exercises in Buddhist-Christian Comparative Theology. The first is on the theme of humility and its relationship to liberation vis-à-vis certain Christian feminist strategies to reclaim humility as a gendered strategy. The second explores Kierkegaard’s truth as subjectivity vis-à-vis the Tibetan Buddhist claim of truth as non-duality through a comparative method based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in cognitive linguistics. The third argues that Paul’s understanding of pneuma and pneumatic life is fittingly compared with Tibetan understandings of the “subtle body” and associated phenomena; parallels between the two helpfully transform our understanding of early Christianity. Marc Colbourne, University of Toronto “I am but lowly”: A Comparative Look at Humility in the Hagiographies of Yeshé Tsogyal and Mechtild of Magdeburg Abstract The proposed paper responds to Michelle Voss’ 2009 invitation to test the wider applicability of her mapping of humility in the writings of Mechthild de Magdeburg onto a nine-level organizational schema. Using a comparative methodology, this paper will expand theological understanding of the trope of humility in the autobiographies of 8th century Tibetan Buddhist visionary, Yeshé Tsogyal. In doing so, it claims that an embrace of humility can further our own journey on the path to liberation. Jizhang Yi, University of Toronto A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective on Kierkegaard’s Truth and Existence Abstract This paper is a philosophical examination of Kierkegaard’s approach to truth and existence in relation to Tibetan Buddhist thought represented by Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). A problem that seems to surface for the close reader with some familiarity with both thinkers is whether Kierkegaard’s truth as subjectivity is similar to truth as non-duality in Tibetan Buddhism as lacking a subject and object distinction between the knower and what is to know (the referent). Adopting a comparative method based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in cognitive linguistics, my study embraces an investigation that is in effect an argument favoring a similarity between truth as subjectivity and truth as non-duality. This research implies that Tibetan Buddhism offers the resources for our contemporary inquiry into the relevant issue in Kierkegaard’s thought. It contributes to work in inter-religious dialogue and comparative theology, deepening the dialogue between the two faith traditions or cultures. Matthew Vale, Boston College Is There an Early Christian “Subtle Body”? Pauline Pneuma and Tibetan Parallels Abstract I argue here that Paul’s understanding of pneuma and pneumatic life is fittingly compared with Tibetan understandings of the “subtle body” and associated phenomena. Late-ancient Mediterraneans commonly understood pneuma as rarified embodiment. Central for Paul is to be metamorphosed from our present mode of embodiment—psychē-animated, material embodiment—into the mode Jesus accomplished in the resurrection: pneuma embodiment. This metamorphosis is indistinguishably physiological and “mentalistic:” It is a change in “hidden” physiology (in kardia, the seat of nous, where pneuma enters and circulates the body) which causes changes in nous and phronēma (mindset). It occurs through intensive embodied experiences and is accompanied by paranormal manifestations. I point to two Tibetan parallels: (1) theoretical discussions, where subtle embodiment is the order at which mind-becomes-physiology and physiology-becomes-mind; and (2) hagiographic and practice-manual references to paranormal phenomena associated with subtle body changes. These parallels helpfully transform our understanding of early Christianity. Responding Anne C. Klein, Rice University

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