Online Program Book

This session aims to provoke debate on the state of the religions and development field as a whole. The papers in the session interrogate the nuanced nature of FBOs to explain both the positive and negative aspects of their involvement, demonstrate a way to measure the relevance of faith in development work, and explore the roles of young people in religious engagement in high-level policy spaces. These papers show the breadth of research possible within the field of religions and development. As a field with much applied research, they also showcase practical methods and approaches to working with faith actors in development. These papers reflect on the implications of religious engagement at policy and practice levels, from the local to the national and global. 

Contemporary challenges to community formation include social isolation and social violence. Presenters within this session address relational and community issues from diverse religious and philosophical perspectives. Christopher Morales argues that loneliness, the common root of contemporary forms of  violence, whether social, political, or environmental, must be addressed through a politics of friendship, foundational to a just society. John M. Thompson presents a tale in which the Buddha—as friend— brings an end to violence while violating social norms and expectations, thereby circumventing the so-called demands of justice. Thompson proposes that “good friendship” as “good violence” may hold promise as a creative but unconventional response to contemporary social violence. Recognizing that spiritual and religious traditions offer culturally diverse ways of facilitating friendships, Laura Duhan-Kaplan and Anne-Marie Ellithorpe discuss friendship’s role in community formation within global religious traditions, as evidenced in Multireligious Reflections on Friendship.

This panel considers how representations of the past in Jewish girls' novels shape religious orientations and practices in the present. We consider the lineage and inheritance of girls’ stories, both within families and broader communities, in order to parse often unstated but deeply replicated assumptions about girls’ and women’s responsibilities as the memory bearers, sustainers, and mediators of traditional knowledge. The panel is designed to address these questions through two papers, one addressing the trope of girls reading grandmothers’ letters in popular fiction and one addressing gendered differences in Haredi historical fiction novels. The papers will be followed by a response from Dr. Jodi Eichler-Levine to bring together ideas about American Jewish children’s literature, community, and memory. By looking to girls’ literature, we see specific examples in which these traditional roles are not only conveyed, but also possibly subverted by treating girls as textual authorities and purveyors of communal knowledge, or by centering them as mediators between two worlds, in a nexus of Jewish relationships across time.

This panel will showcase the latest research in Sikh Studies from emerging scholars in the study of Sikhs and music, highlighting dynamic approaches and diverse themes. Papers offer a multidisciplinary perspective on Sikh culture, identity, politics and practice. This online panel for emerging scholars looks to emphasise inclusivity and global relevance and aims to inspire collaboration and further research. In particular, this panel explores the intersection of technology, music, and cultural expression in Sikh communities to understand how the transmission of Sikhi is influenced by dynamics of power. The panel includes discussions on the mediation of Sikh Kirtan and the socio-political dimensions of Punjabi popular music particularly in light of government bans on Sikh genres.