Online Program Book

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.

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.

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.