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.


	A25-325 Scriptural Reasoning Unit Theme: Scriptural Reasoning Session: Reading from the Margins Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-26B (Upper Level East) William Young, Endicott College, Presiding This session will introduce the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), an interfaith study practice that gathers people of different faiths around short scriptural texts from the three Abrahamic traditions. This year, our SR session will consider texts that address themes of margins in the Quran, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament. Mubashir Abbasi, University of Virginia Quran chapter 104, verses 1-7 Abstract This session will introduce the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), an interfaith study practice that gathers people of different faiths around short scriptural texts from the three Abrahamic traditions. The text from the Quran through which we will engage themes of margins is chapter 104, verses 1-7. Daniel Weiss, University of Cambridge Leviticus 19:5-10 Abstract This session will introduce the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), an interfaith study practice that gathers people of different faiths around short scriptural texts from the three Abrahamic traditions. The text from the Hebrew Bible through which we will engage themes of margins is Leviticus 19:5-10. Kelly Figueroa-Ray, Hamline University Matthew 14:13-21 Abstract This session will introduce the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), an interfaith study practice that gathers people of different faiths around short scriptural texts from the three Abrahamic traditions. The text from the New Testament through which we will engage themes of margins is Matthew 14:13-21. Nauman Faizi, LUMS University "Scriptural Reasoning as an Academic Practice" Abstract . Business Meeting Kelly Figueroa-Ray, Hamline University, Presiding Laurie Zoloth, University of Chicago, Presiding
	A25-326 Secularism and Secularity Unit Theme: Secularism, Violence, and Care in an Age of Crisis Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Cobalt 500 (Fifth Level) Shakir Stephen, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding This session seeks to interrogate how the various forms of crisis that mark our contemporary historical moment intersect with conceptions of religion and irreligion—terms that have themselves been profoundly shaped by Western secular epistemologies. The first paper examines how configurations of a “secular West” are invoked in the United States to excuse how the American military complex contributes to the climate crisis, while a second paper offers an ethnographic study of opposition to far-right American street preachers in order to scrutinize how religion and irreligion become salient categories within a secular state undergoing intense socio-political strife. Finally, a third paper probes how secular epistemes interact with rapidly changing technologies to inform understandings and experiences of time, highlighting possible avenues for responding to the new anxieties and uncertainties about futurity that these interactions provoke. Liz Vukovic, Yale University Climate Militarism, Secularism, and the Violence of the American Dream Abstract The escalating risk of climate change-related disasters serves as a justification for increased American militarism. Despite the United States military being a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, responses to climate threats fail to address its environmental impact. Policies like the Green New Deal frame climate change as a "threat multiplier," integrating military strategies into environmental initiatives. This approach perpetuates a cycle where military intervention exacerbates climate change, reinforcing the need for further militarization. The discourse surrounding oil, security, and the Middle East constructs a narrative of American intervention as necessary for a greener future, perpetuating a dichotomy between the rational West and the racialized Muslim "other." This paper calls for a reevaluation of climate action strategies to avoid reinforcing hegemonic structures and advocates for solidarity across climate, anti-militarism, and anti-colonial movements. Kyle Byron, University of Toronto Tonalities of Unbelief: From Identity to Tonality in the Study of Irreligion Abstract In this paper, I argue that an ethnographic approach to questions of non/a-religion requires moving away from the dominant sociological orientation that treats irreligion as a stable cognitive state and self-ascribed identity category and toward an anthropological orientation capable of registering the shifting tonalities of unbelief. Inspired by Andreas Bandak’s (2012) concept of “tonalities of immediacy,” I argue that questions of unbelief are best approached by examining the processes through which unbelief is foregrounded and backgrounded as a salient category in everyday life. In other words, while many people may be non-religious as a simple matter of negation, how and when is non-religion activated and intensified as a set of beliefs, affects, and sensibilities? Here, I focus on the ways that sensory rituals of religion out of place—religious practices designed to appear improperly public in ostensibly secular contexts—produce irreligion, generating the very thing they seek to challenge. Thomas Carlson, UCSB Technology, Temporality, and Care: Weaving the Secular and the Religious Abstract Reflection upon the role of technology in shaping our understanding—and experience—of time today calls forth tensions and ambiguities within contemporary life that should prompt us to revise widespread and long held assumptions about the meaning of secularity, the nature of religion, and relations between these two within a world now structured and driven pervasively by technology. Countering the flight from mortal fragility that one can see as much in seemingly secular technologies as in traditional forms of religion, and rejecting the certainties of both dystopian and utopian currents in our contemporary relations with technology, this paper draws on a range of thinkers—from Nietzsche and Heidegger through Michel Serres to Donna Haraway and Mary-Jane Rubenstein—to argue that a vital experience of temporality within today's technological world requires an affective orientation of care or of love toward the transience and insecurity of our social and natural worlds alike. Business Meeting Bradley Onishi, Skidmore College, Presiding Eric Stephen, Harvard University, Presiding
	A25-327 Sikh Studies Unit Theme: New Book Panel with Dr. Pashaura Singh: The Routledge Companion to the life and legacy of Guru Hargobind: Sovereignty, Militancy, and Empowerment of the Sikh Panth Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-28D (Upper Level East) Tejpaul Bainiwal, University of California, Riverside, Presiding This companion studies the Life and Legacy of Guru Hargobind (1590-1644), the sixth Guru of the Sikh tradition. It highlights the complex nature of Sikh society and culture in the historical and socio-economic context of Mughal India. The book reconstructs the life of Guru Hargobind by exploring the ‘divine presence’ in history and memory. It addresses the questions of why and how militancy became explicit during Guru Hargobind’s spiritual reign, and examines the growth of the Sikh community's self-consciousness, separatism, and militancy as an integral part of the process of empowerment of the Sikh Panth. Panelists Pashaura Singh, University of California, Riverside Arvind Mandair, University of Michigan Louis Fenech, University of Northern Iowa Jasjit Singh, University of Leeds
	A25-328 South Asian Religions Unit Theme: Law, Sovereignty, and Spatial Politics: Contesting Religious Sites in South Asia Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-33A (Upper Level East) Deepa Das Acevedo, Emory University, Presiding This panel brings together scholars of religion, anthropology, and law to analyze the spatial politics of contested sites of worship in South Asia. It examines how legal structures in colonial and postcolonial South Asia have served to shape the spatial politics of contested sites, and the interrelations between the multiple religious communities in the region. The papers delve into the dynamics between multiple groups of worshippers, navigating fluid spatial histories and analyzing ritual expressions of practice and solidarity. They investigate a range of previously-unexplored contested sites in South Asia, including the Baba Budan Shah Dargah in Karnataka, Mughal-era mosques legally confirmed as "temples," the Sufi Shrines in Sri Lanka, and, finally, the public spaces of Chennai associated with Muslim women’s ritual presence and solidarity. Together, they serve to connect the politics of particular religious spaces with the broader legal and cultural themes of making and unmaking of sacred spaces. Esha Meher, Yale University Courting the Divine: Hindu Deities and Legal Personhood in India Abstract This paper traces the birth and journey of the Hindu image, from its inception in English colonial jurisprudence to its hasty and irregular application in post-colonial India. Through a tactful use of ancient Hindu texts, colonial legislations, practices and case laws, this paper argues that the image of the Hindu deity occupies a unique position in Indian society, such that it is unfit to belong or be justified by any of the western theories of legal personhood. It is the hasty, colonial application of these theories and its subsequent development that has today created a phenomenon that can no longer be justified by the contours of law. Anna Bigelow, Stanford University Ayodhya of the South?: The Logics, Logistics, and Poetics of Unsharing a Sacred Site Abstract The campaign to ‘liberate’ the Baba Budan Shah Dargah in Karnataka from any Islamic history and purify it for exclusive Hindu usage as a Dattatreya Peetha has proceeded through multiple strategies: political, judicial, and devotional. Today the fate of the site remains ambiguous as some tactics gain traction and others become less salient. By examining the ebbs and flows of the spiritual, legal, and partisan approaches to laying claim to this site, this paper will elucidate the tensions and contradictions between the arenas of authority mobilized in the struggle to claim exclusivity at a once-shared sacred site. M. Shobhana Xavier, Queens University, Kingston Muslim-Buddhist Contestations and Sufi Shrines in Contemporary Sri Lanka Abstract Sufi shrines in Sri Lanka are vital nodes of Islamic piety and materiality amidst a landscape of Buddhist majoritarianism and ethno-religious violence against Muslim minorities. Contemporary shrine cultures are a generative prism through which to understand this political, social, and religious context. In my ongoing fieldwork, spanning ten years, I have been mapping Sufi shrines to understand both their historical and contemporary developments, especially in relation to saints (awliya). In this paper, I show that though stories of saints via shrines embed the islands’ geography within Muslim cosmological and metaphysical roots and routes, they are also fragile archives due to the island’s ongoing ethno-religious contestations. Harini Kumar, Princeton University Beyond the Law: Muslim Women’s Spatial Practices of Dissent Abstract This paper argues that the seemingly apolitical aspects of religious and social life—prayer, marriage, and domestic rituals—are also expressions of political and moral will.rom December 2019 to March 2020, India was engulfed in protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA is the first time in the post-colonial Indian legal landscape that religion is being used as a criterion for citizenship. When protesters exclaim that they will not show their papers, it is not just a form of political dissent; they are also alluding to affective ties to place, kinship, and traditions that temporally and spatially exceed the prescriptive nature of the demands of the state to prove one’s citizenship via documents. Business Meeting SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College, Presiding Bhakti Mamtora, University of Arizona, Presiding
	A25-329 Special Session Theme: Analytic Theology at Fifteen: Growth, Change, and Trajectories of Inclusion Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 310B (Third Level) Aaron Davis, University of St Andrews, Presiding Todd DeRose, Edward Waters University, Presiding In 2009 Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea introduced the term “analytic theology” to the contemporary literary scene through their edited volume Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Since then analytic theology has become the subject of multiple monograph series, degree programs, and academic workshops but, as Michelle Panchuk and Rea observe, it has also developed “a reputation for being inhospitable to careful and experientially informed exploration of the various philosophical-theological issues connected with culturally and theologically marginalized social identities.” Efforts have been made to change this reputation and expand the analytic theological enterprise, but to what extent have these efforts succeeded? In commemoration of Analytic Theology’s fifteenth anniversary, this roundtable features a critical discussion between leading contributors to the diversification of analytic theology on the topic its growth, change, and trajectories of inclusion. Panelists Amy Peeler, Wheaton College Christopher Woznicki, Fuller Theological Seminary Aaron Segal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Kevin Timpe, Calvin University
	A25-330 Study of Islam Unit Theme: Between Borders: Theorizing Boundaries of Category and Space Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-24A (Upper Level East) Shankar Nair, University of Virginia, Presiding Borders and boundaries are essential mechanisms through which our social world is constituted. The papers in this panel contribute to a robust theorization of borders and boundaries in Islamic studies, through an array of rich and multi-layered case-studies exploring a complex intersection of boundaries: from the cosmological (boundaries between this world and the next, the living and the dead) to geographic and political boundaries of space (national and civilizational borders), as well as boundaries of religious and sectarian lines, gendered and sexual difference, and conceptual categories such as the religious and secular. Timothy Gutmann, University of Southern Mississippi Cosmopolitan Reflections: Critique and Imperial Afterlives in the British Museum’s Islamic Gallery Abstract Since 2018, the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World has invited visitors to the British Museum to experience its treasures and reflect on their histories. The British Museum, and others like the Metropolitan, have turned to border-crossing ideas such as “Islamic art” to style themselves as keepers of shared humanity’s shared heritage. Such moves have provoked scholars critically museums’ reception and retention of the material inheritance of empire. In this paper, I argue that while the Islamic Gallery and similar spaces do serve a vital part in the 21st-century imaginary of the “universal museum,” they should not be simply understood as imperial treasure-troves rebranded as liberal institutions. Through its decolonial co-determination and self-critical representation, the Islamic Gallery rather serves as instruction to visitors in how to be reflective cosmopolitans, disquieted by, and yet at home in, a persistently unequal world. Kecia Ali, Boston University Corpses and Kinship in Islamic Jurisprudence: Relating to the Dead Abstract This paper uses formative and classical Muslim legal sources about who can wash whose corpse to investigate a series of questions about bodies, kinship, and the regulation of sex and gender. Juristic discussions about ghusl al-mayyit, the washing of bodies prior to burial, reveal assumptions about what sort of relationships survive death—for instance, in the question of whether a widower can wash the body of the woman who was, when she lived, his wife. Of the many issues that arise in dealing with the newly dead, the jurists focus only on a small subset. Situating this inquiry within a larger scholarly conversation about how Muslim legal and ethical discourses seek to regulate and manage difference, vulnerability, and hierarchy, I argue that early and classical jurisprudential agreements and disagreements over washing corpses reveal both shared norms and differing priorities between and among jurists about how to relate to the dead. Sam Houston, Stetson University Interfaith Solidarity at the Border: Ritual, the Border Mosque/Church, and the _Barzakh_ Moral Imagination Abstract In this presentation, I explore the role of ritual in the interfaith and binational efforts of the “Border Mosque” and “Border Church” in San Diego and Tijuana to express and enact a solidarity with victims of unjust and exploitative immigration systems and practices. The ritual performances by both groups not only served to cultivate solidarities across religious, racial, and national lines; they also functioned as a form of “prefigurative politics” foreshadowing a world free of xenophobia and militarized borders. I unpack the moral imagination cultivated by these performances by drawing on the Qur’anic concept of the _barzakh_ to capture a discursive space which _both_ divides _and_ connects and thus opens up ways of conceiving the self and other that neither presuppose stark opposition nor collapse difference in the name of a liberal modernity. Consequently, a _barzakh_ moral imagination offers promising insights into how we might understand solidarity. Arthur Schechter, Independent Scholar Thinking More Historically about Islam and Violence? A Case Study of the Early Safavid Dynasty Abstract This paper challenges widespread assumptions about the role of violence in establishing Twelver Shiʿism as Iran’s official religion, by presenting the first systematic overview in scholarship of the early Safavid dynasty’s Sufi teachings (until 1524) and thereby refuting common claims of its supporters’ uniquely “militant” or “extremist” Shiʿite beliefs. Considered alongside centuries of precedent in military activities by similar nomadic groups, I show that the Safavids’ use of violence was neither particularly exceptional nor inherently “religious,” offering a less sensational interpretation of their armed enforcement of public Shiʿism better contextualized by their history. Responding to Smith, Asad, Cavanaugh and others, my analysis suggests that a limited rehabilitation of Hodgson’s concept of the “secular” in Islamic history, particularly related to military and administrative practices, may advance more historically grounded theorizations of violence and sectarianism in Islam capable of continued growth in responsiveness to contemporary concerns without being artificially constrained by them.
	A25-331 Study of Judaism Unit Theme: Lived Religion and Jewish Studies: Possibilities, Politics, and Publics Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Cobalt 520 (Fifth Level) R. Marie Griffith, Washington University in St. Louis, Presiding Since the 1990s, building on a broader turn towards the study of practice, American religious studies scholars developed the approach of “lived religion,” a methodology that approaches religious practice as it is enacted, perceived, experienced, and embedded in everyday activities. This roundtable will bring together four scholars of Jewish life who work within, utilize, or theoretically consider lived religion as a methodological approach to Jews and Judaism in the United States for a state-of-the-field discussion that will reflect on the intersection of American Jewish studies and lived religion. How has lived religion helped Jewish Studies scholars to reimagine or reconceptualize the religious worlds that Jewish people make? This panel will consider whether a lived religion approach has democratized the study of Jews and Judaism, whether it has the potential to do so, and whether there are other models that would serve us better. Panelists Cara Rock-Singer, University of Wisconsin Laura Yares, Michigan State University Nechama Juni, Carleton College Rachel Gross, San Francisco State University
	A25-332 Theology and Continental Philosophy Unit Theme: Figurality and the Christian Question Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-30E (Upper Level East) Samantha Kang, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding This panel interrogates the way that figures and figurative language are strategically deployed in the history of Christianity to secure a claim, or claims, to religious and political hegemony; that is, to describe its own central doctrines (the figure of the Crucified), or to argue its case against Jews, heretics, and pagans (figural or typological hermeneutics), etc. We are also interested in the way that figurality plays a pivotal role in movements in the Christian tradition that seek to avail themselves of biblical narratives and figures to ground a particular political or ethical project, and in the extent to which figurality is an essential feature of human life, language, and thought. Figures and figurative language are, so to speak, up for grabs. What this panel proposes is an analysis of how the Christian tradition wields its figures—be they swords or plowshares. Amaryah Shaye Armstrong, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Theological Reproduction: Figurality and the Sexual Life of Christian Sense Abstract This paper reads Henri de Lubac’s writings on Christian spiritual understanding and Eugene Rogers’ writings on the sexuality of the Christian body to show that figurality is how sexuality and social reproduction are said in Christian thought. Christian figurality incarnates the sexual sense of Christianity through the figure of the Jew who, in the Christian imagination, becomes the occasion for the enfleshed verification of Christianity’s truth. By analyzing how each author frames Jewishness in their expositions of Christian sense and sexuality, I show how anxieties circulate around resolving the crises that would call Christianity’s status as a “living” tradition into question. Staving off this perpetual crisis of continuity reveals the relationship between the social reproduction of a distinctively Christian sense capacity and the sexual securitization of (in this case, Christianity’s) significance through the proper stewardship and management of Christianity’s textual and perceptual life—its erotics of sense. Samuel Baudinette, University of Chicago Divinity School The Figure of the Pagan: Varro and Hermes contra Augustine in the Theater of Postmodern A/theology Abstract This paper offers an immanent critique of Klossowski and Lyotard’s work, which shows how their recuperation of a pagan “theatrical” theology of figuration against a Christian “natural” theology of semiotic abstraction, carried out in the name of Varro against Augustine, is a willfully heretical a/theism. Turning to their invocation of late-antique accounts of religion, I contend that their conception of figurality entails something like a materialist anti-Christianity: a Nietzschean polytheism that challenges Augustinian and monotheist idealism. However, this paper also demonstrates that this materialist anti-Christianity still relies upon Augustinian “idol theory” to affirm its radical project of impulsive autonomy and consequently remains beholden to the very Christian theo-logic it claims to resist. I therefore introduce the Surrealist International, which desired the concrete abolition of Christianity, rather than its mere figurative disavowal or parodic transgression, as a “hermetic” and “gothic” alternative to Klossowski and Lyotard’s theater of postmodern a/theology. Timothy Snediker, University of California, Santa Barbara Figura and the Critique of Supersession Abstract This paper considers the reception of Erich Auerbach’s concept of figura in the works of Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, especially the way that ‘figural interpretation’ and ‘figuration’ are deployed by Frei and Lindbeck as a means of recovering a ‘classic model’ of reading scripture that—allegedly—avoids the theological and political pitfalls of the logic of supersession. The paper briefly summarizes Auerbach’s theory as it is presented in his 1939 “Figura,” then traces the vicissitudes of figura in post-liberal theological circles. The paper focuses especially on Lindbeck’s text from 1997, “The Gospel’s Uniqueness.” I argue that, far from avoiding, much less dissolving, the problem of supersession, Lindbeck’s hermeneutics effaces the distinctively Christian genesis and structure of figural interpretation as the concrete, historical practice of the logic of supersession, and ultimately repeats the supersessionist gesture at the very moment he claims to repudiate it. Responding Sarah Hammerschlag, University of Chicago
	A25-333 Theology of Martin Luther King Jr. Unit Theme: CANCELLED: Social Change, Civil Rights, and the Human Condition: A Religious Approach to King's Nonviolent Philosophy Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-31B (Upper Level East) Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois, Presiding For those who seek to grapple with violence, conflicts, wars, and conundrums across the globe, a timely religious and ethical consideration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's nonviolent philosophy is timely. King's critical response to the "three evils of society"–racism, militarism, and materialism (poverty)–represents a point of departure for considering the movement that emerged from his philosophical thinking. These three evils are sites of ethical inquiry and engagement where one can consider how social change, civil rights, and the human condition carry religious intonations in King's nonviolent philosophy. How does King's nonviolent philosophy empower displaced or dehumanized persons? How does his philosophy utilize religious elements (e.g., moral and ethical inquiry, sense of community, and Divine-centeredness) to pursue liberation? Dr. Santha Jetty, Columbus State University Satyagraha and the Dalits: King's Nonviolent Philosophy and Civil Rights Abstract The philosophy of the nonviolent movement as a belief system mirrors the principles of respecting the life and dignity of every person without prejudiced notions, rejecting all forms of discrimination and exclusion, and devoting resources to uplift underdeveloped communities from political and social oppression. In promoting these ideals, King followed the nine fundamental principles of "Satyagraha," namely, focusing on self-reliance, propagating tactics, upholding basic principles of actions, and many others. The paper will explore how the noble, fundamental rules of Satyagraha achieve justice for the Dalit Christians in India who are facing discrimination because of their Christian faith. Donnell Williamson, Brown University Kingian Nonviolence and Prophetic Christianity Abstract "Kinginan Nonviolence and Prophetic Christianity" will examine the religious contours of King's nonviolence philosophy in light of the various commitments to social change and transformation found in Walter Rauschenbusch's "Social Gospel" and the Black Intellectual tradition. The religious language and sentiments undergirding King's nonviolence philosophy signifies his continous grappling with the existential crises affecting the Black American community, a concern for the Protestant faith tradition, and a commitment to outlining a love ethic rooted in justice. Anjana Dayal de Prewitt, American Red Cross A Social Prophet, Nonviolence, and Women's Health Abstract "A Prophet, Nonviolence, and Women's Health" will argue how King's nonviolence philosophy provides an ethical opening to discuss the importance of women's health. Unknown Member, Dis-Entangling the Theo-Economic Ethos in King’s Moral Leadership Offerings to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Abstract The economic dimensions of King’s work in the Civil Rights Movement offers a practical vision and a prophetic lens that empowers modern believers to meditate on the intersection between religion and civil rights. One way we can adjudicate the present state of civil rights from the vantage point of the aims of the 1964 legislation is through a honest estimation of economic advancement amongst all races of people. Reflections on theology, gender, and race animate the economic question of civil rights and religion because religious institutions have played significant roles in civil rights movements. Theological and economic frameworks influence how people perceive civil rights because they inform economic reasoning and shape moral imperatives. In helping to pass the Civil Rights Act, women have also fought for equal rights. And because racial injustice provides a daunting provocation, the disentangling of King’s theo-economic ethos in his moral leadership offerings is critically important. Business Meeting Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois, Presiding Montague Williams, Point Loma Nazarene University, Presiding
	A25-334 Women and Religion Unit Theme: Women's Religious Advocacy and Subversive Strategies Across Histories Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-32A (Upper Level East) Rachel Pang, Davidson College, Presiding This session offers historical analyses to uncover the diverse strategies women have employed to navigate, resist, and reshape the landscapes of religious communities and societal expectations. From the radical advocacy of Caroline Dall and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 19th century, through the covert resistance of crypto-religious women in the Crown of Aragon, to the nuanced negotiation of social and religious roles by Coptic Orthodox women in 20th-century Egypt, the session illuminates the often-overshadowed narratives of women's resilience and agency within religious frameworks. Through critical analysis of historical texts, socio-religious dynamics, and feminist methodologies, the panelists present how women across different epochs and cultures have challenged religious violence, preserved contested identities, and claimed spaces of leadership and influence. Lydia Willsky-Ciollo, Fairfield University Caroline Dall, Lost Prophet? Engaging Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible” and Caroline Dall’s The College, the Market, and the Court Abstract Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912) did not play well with others—so goes the historical record. Dall’s excision is notable for a number of reasons. As with many stories of “difficult women,” the leap to cite personality issues as the reason for exclusion by her peers obscures more than it reveals. This paper argues it was the radical politics born from her Unitarian upbringing, and her continued devotion to that liberal branch of Protestantism, along with her Transcendentalist proclivities that made her difficult to pin down. More specifically, it will engage in a critical reading of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible with an eye to what is carefully curated passages and commentaries obscure about the kind of biblically-rooted and radical women’s rights advocacy (which included a reimagining of sex work) that Dall brought to light in The College, the Market, and the Court. Ivana Arsic, University Pompeu Fabra Navigating Adversity: Women's Strategies in Crypto-Religious Communities Abstract The paper explores the survival strategies of crypto-religious minorities within the forced mono-confessional pre-modern Crown of Aragon. It introduces a novel comparative framework, focusing on the strategies employed by female members: Conversas and Moriscas, Christian women of Jewish and Muslim origin, respectively. These strategies are examined as they navigate the complexities of preserving their contested identities amidst religious violence within the inquisitorial tribunals of Barcelona, Valencia, and Zaragoza from the late 15th to the mid-17th centuries. Employing an interdisciplinary and intersectional methodological approach, the study investigates the strategies adopted by these women to negotiate religious violence and maintain their identities. Through analysis of religious practice preservation, coping mechanisms, and negotiation tactics, the research unveils the resilience of these communities. By shedding light on the challenges faced by women in preserving cultural heritage amidst religious persecution, it highlights the intricate interplay of gender, religion, and social status within crypto-religious minorities. Weston Bland, University of Pennsylvania Navigating the First Mission of Motherhood: the Exclusion of Coptic Orthodox Women from Institutions of Communal Leadership, 1920-1960s Abstract This paper explores women’s exclusion from Coptic institutions of governance between 1927-1961. Despite a growing consensus that Coptic institutions should represent and be chosen by the people, Coptic women were excluded from participation as voters and members. I argue that women’s exclusion from Coptic institutional governance was rooted in the deployment of paternalistic readings of scriptures and tradition alongside a popular current in Egyptian feminism that stressed the need to educate women so they could raise nationalist sons. These dynamics created a communal discourse that framed women’s position in society in terms of their place in the family, justifying institutional exclusion on the grounds that wives should be subservient to their husbands and should dedicate themselves to maternal responsibilities. In turn, Coptic women mobilized these expectations to demand inclusion given Coptic institutions’ role in family life, as well as to carve out alternative spaces of influence as educators and journalists.
	A25-400 Applied Religious Studies Committee Theme: CANCELLED: Building Frameworks for Inclusivity and Career Diversity in Program Units Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 300 (Third Level) Daniel Fisher-Livne, Hebrew Union College, Presiding Session cancelled. Panelists Mohamed S. Hassan, Independent
	A25-401 Arts, Literature, and Religion Unit Theme: Interpreting Cartographies Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-32A (Upper Level East) Adam Newman, University of Illinois, Presiding To explore what it means to think “cartographically,” this session investigates the connections between cartography and religious meaning-making through the study of material culture, literary analysis, and artistic practice. The first paper explores maps of pilgrimage created with needle and thread as records of spiritual pilgrimage. Through line and symbol, recorded in stitches, the process of pilgrimage is remembered and captured as physical artifact. The second paper examines geopolitical disputes of 20th-century eastern Europe and renders visible the maps created by lay Catholics as they moved between Marian shrines and rural chapels in the Hungarian landscape. The third presentation uses the lens of ethnography to analyze the novel “The River Between,” by Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. This ethnographic perspective makes evident how the author’s discontent with the colonization and his visualization of a future beyond the European conquest. The final paper explores the “mapping” out of sacred stories in the novel A Record of Romantic Marching (2002) by Hikaru Okuizumi through the themes of exilic wandering, apocalypse, and imperialism. Alina Williams, Indiana University, Bloomington Mapping Mary: Lay Cartographies of Communist Hungary Abstract “What the map cuts up, the story cuts across,” writes Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life. This paper seeks to tell a different story of the communist period by drawing on sources like prayerbooks, devotions, and shrine cards typically seen as irrelevant to the broader geopolitical and territorial disputes of 20th-century eastern Europe. In so doing, this paper renders visible the maps created by lay Catholics as they moved between Marian shrines and rural chapels that dotted the landscape, and I argue that another map of Hungary emerges, one that participates in but is not fully subsumed by the geopolitical border disputes of the time. Through a study of Hungarian-language sources that cut across such borders, I show how these lay Catholic cartographies were grounded in the notion that Hungary was, is, and will always be Mary’s country, that Mary is, in fact, what makes Hungary. Miriam Jessie Fisher, Laidlaw College, Aotearoa/ New Zealand Mapping Pilgrimage – stitched cartography as spiritual practice and sacred reading Abstract This paper explores enacted arts-based research of pilgrimage as essential to spiritual locatedness and journey. Maps are considered as a kind of sacred record or text in meaning-making, offering maps of pilgrimage created with needle and thread as records of spiritual pilgrimage. Through line and symbol, recorded in stitches, the process of pilgrimage is remembered and captured as physical artefact. The work becomes a way finder, a visible spirituality. Maps of biblical characters and the researcher will be shared as a new way of reading ‘sacred stories.’ In this way a cartography of pilgrimage invites meditation on landscapes of spiritual significance, insights, homecoming, exile and wandering as human aspects of being in a world as seekers and those sought. Connections to indigenous map-making and journey will be highlighted. Listeners will be invited to consider the cartography of their lives as a means to witness to their spiritual pilgrimage. Haruka Umetsu Cho, Santa Clara University Apocalyptic Wandering in the Wilderness: Reading Hikaru Okuizumi, A Record of Romantic Marching Abstract This paper explores the “mapping” out of sacred stor(ies), especially themes around wandering in the wilderness by examining the Japanese novel, A Record of Romantic Marching (2002) by Hikaru Okuizumi. This novel follows the journey of Japanese soldiers who are sent to an (imagined) island in Southeast Asia that was occupied and devastated by Japan during WWII. The story tours the “hell”: wounded and sick soldiers continue an “apocalyptic march” in the jungle in a fashion that mimics the Israelites wandering in the desert in the book of Exodus. Eventually, the novel reveals that the soldiers are ghosts who, eternally bound by the megalomania of colonialism, are doomed to perpetually wander the wilderness and never arrive to the promised (home)land. Describing a wandering without liberation, this “cartographic” novel criticizes Japanese imperialism and its legacy and urges the reader to ponder how to stop this—and other—“marches” through hell. Kenneth Ofula, University of Oxford “THE RIVER BETWEEN:” A DISCOURSE ON NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION OF AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY Abstract This paper gives a twist to the understanding of Ngugi as just a literary writer, and plausibly qualifies him as an ethnographic writer and the novel as an ethnographic novel. To achieve this, the paper will seek to respond to the questions: does Ngugi qualify as an ethnographic writer? Does the novel, qualify as an ethnographic novel? The paper argues that, by considering both historical function – symptom of the discontent generated by colonization – and imaginative function – future beyond which European conquest can be imagined or be revealed – the novel sets a good framework for analyzing imagination of indigenous puberty rites through Christian history. As a work of ethnographic imagination, Ngugi wa Thiong’o gives a creative account of his embodied experiences similar to other literary works of Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti among others in the study of religion and literature.
	A25-402 Buddhist Pedagogy Seminar Theme: Teaching with Buddhist Art and Material Culture Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-6D (Upper Level West) Nicole Willock, Old Dominion University, Presiding This roundtable introduces the Rubin Museum’s recently launched Project Himalayan Art, a multi-disciplinary resource for teaching about Buddhism through art and material culture. Project Himalayan Art (PHA) is designed to help scholars and teachers make connections across diverse regional expressions of Buddhist culture, and to expand representation of Himalayan and Inner Asian religious cultures in the classroom. This roundtable will be structured as a dialogue, in which attendees can explore new multimedia resources for teaching Asian religions through object-centered approach, while also giving feedback on PHA materials. Session presenters are particularly interested in receiving input on PHA from the practical pedagogical standpoint, and welcome attending participants’ thoughts on using art and material culture in their teaching, including from faculty who have already experimented with using Project Himalayan Art resources (https://projecthimalayanart.rubinmuseum.org/). Panelists Annabella Pitkin, Lehigh University Elena Pakhoutova, Rubin Museum, New York Karl Debreczeny, Rubin Museum of Art Xiaotian Yin, Harvard University Responding Benjamin Bogin, Skidmore College
	A25-403 Buddhist Philosophy Unit Theme: Buddhist Epistemology and Virtue Epistemology Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-11B (Upper Level West) Catherine Prueitt, University of British Columbia, Presiding Buddhist epistemology directs to knowledge of reality as it is and serves as a path toward liberation from suffering. Meanwhile, how one perceives reality fundamentally influences moral conduct and decision-making. So, what is the structure of such intellectual virtue? Reflecting on this question of valid cognition upon telic knowledge or truth, this panel focuses on Buddhist epistemology and virtue epistemology. Its objectives are to explore these two areas through different Buddhist philosophical perspectives, foster dialogue across various Buddhist contexts, and engage Buddhist epistemology with its contemporary relevance. Laura Guerrero, The College of William & Mary A Buddhist Account of Epistemic Wellbeing Abstract This paper explores the Vaibhāṣika Buddhist account of knowledge. In particular, I will explore the way Vaibhāṣika trope ontology influences how the Vaibhāṣika understand complex mental states and when these states constitute knowing states. Mental states, like any complex entity in Vaibhāṣika metaphysics, are merely conventionally real, as are the agents they are commonly thought to belong. Here I will argue that despite denying the ultimate reality of epistemic agents, the Vaibhāṣika account constitutes a kind of virtue epistemology whereby a mental state counts as a knowing state only if it includes and precludes certain virtue-related tropes. Many Buddhist virtues, I argue, are importantly epistemic. Engaging in practices that inhibit the arising of certain epistemic vices and foster the occurrence of epistemic virtues is a core feature of Buddhist teachings, which constitute a path to a distinctive kind of epistemic well-being. Amber Carpenter, Yale-NUS College How Dignāga's Epistemic Ideal Transforms the Knower Abstract Buddhist ethics can be seen to hold up a certain epistemic ideal—knowledge of reality as it is—as that at which we ought to aim, if we would be free from suffering. It is thus a fundamentally epistemological and idealist ethics. Dignāga codifies the nature of this epistemic ideal in his pramāṇa-theory, which argues there are exactly two forms of valid cognition and only one of them cognises things as they are. By considering how a conception of ideal knowledge embeds certain values and virtues (but not others), I wish to set out the expected effects on character of striving for, and attaining the primary epistemic ideal of knowing reality as it is. I then shall ask what the ethical effects are, if any, of pursuing or attaining the secondary form of valid cognition, anumāṇa, in pursuit of which one is held to quite different norms and values. Dominic Sur, Utah State University The Art of Imagination at the Intersection of pramāṇa & samaya: Normative Epistemology & Tantric Ethics in Early Dzogchen Abstract Since the 19th-century reforms led by Ju Mipham, Nyingma philosophy has focused on using normative epistemological discourse (pramāṇa) to validate the tantric concept of primordial purity. This approach, attributed to the translator Rongzom (11th-12th c.), considered the pioneer of this trend in Tibet, is highlighted in Mipham’s Beacon of Certainty (nges shes rin po che sgron ma). Mipham traces the Nyingma tradition's practice of tantric pramāṇa, affirming primordial purity qua the inseparability of the two truths, as a defining feature of the Old School's philosophical Vajrayāna. Rongzom’s work, Establishing Appearance as Divine (snang ba lhar bsgrub pa), from a period when Tibetan Buddhism absorbed Vajrayāna ritual and pan-Indian epistemology, exemplifies this fusion. This paper explores Rongzom’s tantric pramāṇa within classical epistemology and Nyingma tantra, arguing that its purpose lies in authorizing an ideology behind a practical epistemology of tantric ethics (samaya) than in logically debating “right view.” Yat Ching YEUNG, Temple University Virtuous Vision: Navigating the Nexus of Virtue Reliabilism and Moral Phenomenology in The Treasury of Valid Knowledge and Reasoning Abstract This paper explores Buddhist epistemology’s structure while considering its contemporary relevance. Specifically, it examines the plausibility of reliabilist virtue epistemology and moral phenomenology in chapter 9 on perception in The Treasury of Valid Knowledge and Reasoning (tshad ma rigs gter) written by Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251). Buddhist epistemology seems to overlap with virtue reliabilism by emphasizing a faculty-based approach that requires reliable and stable cognitive competences. For example, yogic perception constitutes non-erroneous valid knowledge, while being unaffiliated with self-clinging and afflictions, promotes a form of intellectual virtue. Meanwhile, Buddhist moral phenomenology directs toward a cultivating pathway experiencing in the world, focusing on the input side and non-egocentricity. Reflecting on these, this paper argues that Buddhist epistemology and cognitive theory, at least in the tshad ma rigs gter, are intertwined with ethical, metaphysical, and soteriological dimensions concerning how one perceives and engages with oneself, others, and the world without a self.
	A25-404 Catholic Studies Unit Theme: Queer Sacramentality Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Indigo 202B (Second Level) Lily Stewart, Northwestern University, Presiding This panel foreground three distinct critical perspectives that deploy queer theory to study Catholic sacramentality. Drawing also from gender studies, theology, and ethnography theses paper work 1) to analyze the ways in which queer and sacramental performativity actualize the eschatological ends of the human body and the Catholic Church; 2) to interrogate how the Catholic priest is singled out as occupying a particularly ambiguous position whose “categorical shiftiness” has functioned in Catholic studies to normativize oddity through the admixture of religious and scholarly authority, and 3) to approach the queering of sacramentality as an issue of sacramental justice that enacts a counterpublic that demands unrestricted access to the Eucharist that is built upon nondiscriminatory ordination, radical hospitality, and promiscuous ecumenism. Niklas Rodewald, Loyola University Chicago Performing the Eschaton: Queer Performativity and Sacramental Action Abstract This paper argues that queer gender performativity can be understood as functioning, ecclesiologically and eschatologically, in a way analogous to sacraments within Catholic theology. The paper begins with a survey of the Church as Sacrament in Avery Dulles’s Models of the Church before placing Dulles in dialogue with Kimberly Belcher and Judith Butler. Through this dialogue, I contend that both gender and sacramentality share a connection of efficacious performativity – both produce the reality they signify. In this light, both queer and sacramental performativity are seen to foreshadow and actualize the eschatological ends of both the human body and the Church. This theological framework results in an expanded view of the 'Catholic sacramental imagination' that embraces queerness as 'sacramentally' revelatory of the age to come. Cella Masso-Rivetti, Columbia University Catholic Priests, Queer Ambiguities, Category Anxieties Abstract Greeley writes in The Catholic Imagination (2000) that the priest “is a sacrament” and sets up the priest as “someone special,” locating the priest unstably between intimacy and oddity. Forms of queer sacramentality are not somewhere “out there” in Catholicism but riddle the genealogy of American Catholic studies – “the priest” is an intimately and uncomfortably close queer sacramental site. Often associated with category anxieties (such as between human and divine, masculine and feminine), here I focus on the category anxiety “the priest” precipitates between religious and scholarly authority, or between Catholicism and Catholic studies scholarship (exemplified in priest-scholars like Greeley). I explore the ways that Catholic studies has stabilized a normative classificatory scheme utilizing categories like “the priest” that reproduce gender and sexuality categories from Catholicism. The ambiguities and categorical shiftiness of “the priest” have functioned in Catholic studies to normativize oddity through the admixture of religious and scholarly authority. Elizabeth Ann Pritchard, Bowdoin College Sacramental Justice as Queer Sacramentality Abstract What would a queer Catholic sacramentality look like? Drawing from Andrew Greely’s vision of Catholic sacramentality, recent calls for a more politicized queer theory, and an ethnography of US independent Catholics, this paper illuminates the queer sacramentality of independent US Catholic churches as “sacramental justice.” Sacramental justice provides unrestricted access to the Eucharist and, in doing so, enacts a counterpublic consisting of a communion of bodies across differences sharing sources of material, spiritual, and affectionate abundance. The key aspects of this sacramental justice are nondiscriminatory ordination, radical hospitality, and promiscuous ecumenism. Having elaborated these aspects, the paper concludes by 1) proffering sacramental justice as a critical and politicalized queer practice exemplifying what William Cavanaugh envisions as the Eucharist’s “different kind of politics” and what Susan Ross heralds as the “extravagant affections” of a feminist Eucharistic theology; and 2) calling for the imperative to queer the category “Catholic.” Responding Anthony Petro, Boston University
	A25-405 Chinese Religions Unit Theme: Teaching Women in Chinese Religions: Roundtable on a New Sourcebook of Translated Texts Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-33A (Upper Level East) Katherine Alexander, University of Colorado, Presiding In this roundtable, a group of scholars who have collaboratively compiled a sourcebook of new critical translations of works relating to women in Chinese religions will speak about their forthcoming work, its contribution to the field, and its applications in the university classroom. Tentatively titled Teaching Women in Chinese Religions, the work focuses on women’s life-stages and how religious practices and rituals shaped norms around female identity and bodies. With chapters on roles like daughter, wife, mother and non-mother (nuns and shamans), and life-stages like girlhood, marriage, and widowhood, the book contributes to filling a critical gap in the diversity of teachable texts about women’s religious lives in Chinese history and culture. The panel aims to introduce the themes of this work, give audience members practical approaches to using its contents in the classroom, and create a forum for open discussion of best practices for teaching religion, gender, and literature. Panelists Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota Xu Ma, Lafayette College Rongdao Lai, McGill University Hsiao-wen Cheng, University of Pennsylvania Natasha Heller, University of Virginia Megan Bryson, University of Tennessee
	A25-406 Christian Systematic Theology Unit Theme: Book panel on Judith Wolfe, The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-9 (Upper Level West) Kevin Hector, University of Chicago, Presiding Panelists will discuss Judith Wolfe's The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2024), followed by a response from the author. Panelists Lexi Eikelboom, Australian Catholic University Christopher Insole, University of Durham, UK Brian Robinette, Boston College Responding Judith Wolfe, University of St Andrews
	A25-407 Class, Religion, and Theology Unit Theme: Class Struggle and the Constitution of Religious Communities Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-24A (Upper Level East) Ken Estey, Brooklyn College, Presiding . Volker Küster, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz Christians, Marxists, and the Workers Movement: The Case of Leonard Ragaz and Religious Socialism in Switzerland Abstract The paper revisits the live and work of Leonhard Ragaz (1868-1945) in the current crisis mode of thinking. Born as son of a peasant family himself, Rev. Ragaz first aligned himself publicly with the workers movement in his famous brick mason strike sermon (Maurerstreikpredigt) in the Basel cathedral 1902. In 1921 he quit his professorship to live in a workers’ quarter in Zurich and devoted himself to workers education. Ragaz was convinced that Christians not only have to be always on the side of the weak, but they also must be socialists! He interpreted Socialism as judgement and promise for Christians. What can we learn from his vision of becoming human, the new human being and the Reign of the living God for a Pantopia against the New Normal? Moina Maaz, Claremont Graduate University Salafi Women and Karl Marx's Theory on Class Struggle. Abstract Salafism is a conservative movement within Sunni Islam, and Salafists are a group that relies on the literal interpretation of the Quran, the Sunna, and the consensus of the Salaf. Women within Salafism are deemed ignorant, weak, and unfit for participation in social life. Many Salafi scholars encourage the exploitation of women and use violence as the only means of control. Whereas this dynamic unfolds in many Muslim societies across the world and contradicts the teaching of Islam on the role and rights of women, we can spot some similarities between the women in the Salafi thought and Karl Marx’s theory on class struggle. I will be comparing the role of women in Salafi’s thought with Marx’s perceived role of the proletariat while highlighting the women’s autonomy over their bodies and earnings as dictated by the Shia interpretation of the status of women in Islam. Business Meeting Jeremy Posadas, Stetson University, Presiding Kerry Danner, Georgetown University, Presiding
	A25-408 Contemporary Islam Unit Theme: Refusing the Normative through Racial and Gendered Embodiment Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-5B (Upper Level West) Hussein Rashid, Harvard Divinity School, Presiding This panel showcases three papers that challenge established religious and social norms through racial and gendered embodiment. One paper explores the experiences of U.S. Black Muslima Betty Shabazz, emphasizing her acts of refusal against racial, religious, and gendered discourses that sought to limit her subjectivity. Another paper focuses on American Muslim comedians who perform halal comedy as a form of daʿwa to encourage ethical conduct and engage with various religious communities. A third paper examines the work of comedian-actor Kumail Nanjiani, who takes to task representation and stereotypes as a Muslim storyteller in American popular culture. His physical transformation for his role in “The Eternals,” sparked debates around masculinity, race, and Islamophobia, and showed the complexities of embodying a Muslim identity in Hollywood. Together, these papers offer nuanced insights into the ways that racial and gendered embodiment can be a site of resistance and defiance against societal norms and expectations. Iman AbdoulKarim, Yale University Betty Shabazz and Refusing Blackness as Secular Abstract This paper examines the relationship between U.S. secularism and blackness through an engagement with U.S. Black Muslima thought, focusing specifically on Betty Shabazz (1934-1997), a figure powerfully aligned with Black Muslima life. It identifies three acts of refusal preserved in her mid-twentieth-century archive. Shabazz resisted integration into existing racial, religious, and gendered discourses from her first encounters with the NOI in 1955 to her corrections to Malcolm X’s politics post-1965. Shabazz’s negations rejected the status quo and envisioned alternative possibilities for black life (Campt, 2019). Attention to Shabazz’s refusals allows scholars of religion to see moments where a religiously, racially, and gender-identified subject disagrees with how the world diagnoses their religion, gender, and race. Secularism is the term that I argue integrates Blackness into what is Thinking with Shabazz shows that this integration depends on erasing Blackness as an epistemology for thinking and imagining otherwise in the twentieth century. Morgane Thonnart, Independent Scholar Performing Halal Comedy in the US: An Intra-Ummaic Form of Socio-Religious Activism Abstract Over the last three decades, several American Muslim stand-up comedians have positioned themselves at the forefront of a halal circuit, such as Preacher Moss, Omar Regan, Yasmin Elhady and Moses the Comic. These four comedians share a commitment to clean comedy and have dedicated a considerable part of their career to connecting with their religious community/ies. Research shows how their performances broadly partake in efforts to (re)model a religious community around norms of virtuous conduct in Muslim diasporic contexts (Thonnart 2023). Following their trajectories, this paper examines what it means when comedians make propositions about religious norms to their coreligionists; and 2) argues that these ethico-religious projects constitute a form of da‘wa. Building upon the work of anthropologist Charles Hirschkind, this paper seeks to open and deepen the study of socioreligious activism in and through comedy, and critically engage our vocabularies in doing so. Samah Choudhury, Ithaca College The Superhero and the Beta Male: Making the Masculine Muslim Body with Kumail Nanjiani Abstract The Pakistani American comedian Kumail Nanjiani stands among the most prominent Muslim storytellers in the U.S. television and film industries today. Through his training in standup, Nanjiani is aware that this body communicates something to be addressed and redressed for audiences immediately – what Jasbir Puar calls the “queer perversity of terrorist bodies.” His comedy routines, shows, and film all articulate and platform Pakistan as a very "Muslim" place; a mythical homogenous home to inequality and suffering, particularly for Muslim women but also for the men who cannot overcome Islam's determinism. Nanjiani names and enacts that deficiency through the seemingly woeful masculinity of a "beta male" body. His 2019 transformation for the Marvel Cinematic Universe reveals the fraught nature of Muslim masculinities that can only temporarily approximate the ideal white masculine form before suspicion and cruel assessments turn, once more, against those bodies from which Islam cannot be extracted. Responding Hussein Rashid, Harvard Divinity School
	A25-411 Hinduism Unit Theme: Hinduism and Climate Change Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-30C (Upper Level East) Vijaya Nagarajan, University of San Francisco, Presiding This panel seeks to explore how Hindu practices, stories, and discursive worlds articulate with climate change, both as an idea and as a set of material-physical processes impacting South Asia at present. Specific inquiries in the session range from the interplay of caste, race, sexuality, and gender with the natural and mythological worlds of the Sundarbans and Tamil Nadu to Ayurvedic perspectives on moral texture to the responses of Himalayan religious tourism to shifting weather patterns. The goal of the panel is to invite conversations about how Hindu traditions can help to think about issues of scale (microcosm, macrocosm), relationality, and human/nonhuman agency in a moment of cascading ecological crises that often intensify pre-existing forms of structural violence. Vijaya Nagarajan, University of San Francisco Wonder and Terror in Climate Perception: Bhūdevī, Yama, and Thillaiammal in the Hindu Cosmological Imaginary and the Environmental Commons in southern India Abstract This paper explores the multiple ways in which the aesthetic emotions of wonder and terror could help us understand critical aspects of the planetary climate that overlap with Hindu mythologies and cosmologies. Are there cultural and religious tools in the stories of the Hindu imaginary that could assist us in expanding these collective mythic imaginations? Closely investigating three mythic figures: Bhūdevī, the goddess of the earth in the sthala purāna of a village along the Kaveri River in Tamil Nadu; Yama, the god of death, in the Upanishads; and Thillaiammāl, the goddess of the mangroves in Chidambaram, this paper uses methodologies from both ethnographic research and literary religious texts to reframe religious cosmologies as encounters with environmental commons. Calynn Dowler, Vanderbilt University Staging Survival: Popular Performance and Hindu Climate Ethics in the Sundarbans Abstract This paper considers religious responses to climate change among Hindus in the Sundarbans islands of West Bengal, India. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper focuses on creative approaches to climate change activism, including theatrical performances. The performances connect climate change with theological notions of spiritual pollution, vices such as greed and desire, and negative emotions like anger. Alternatively, the drama promotes virtuous behavior, interreligious harmony, and collective social action as keys to ameliorating climate change. Paradoxically, the drama uses mythological figures to center human agency, and in this way, it also articulates new ideas about human responsibility in moral and material worlds. I argue that this case not only provides insight into Hindu framings of climate change, but also how modernizing Hindu visions encounter and transform existing frameworks of divine and human agency. Matthew Robertson, Murray State University Bearing the Gods in Mind: Psychogenic Climate Change in Early Ayurveda Abstract This paper examines a theory of anthropogenic climate change from the early works of Ayurveda. Building on scholarship that highlights the fundamental interrelation of humans and their environments in Ayurvedic theory, I show how Ayurveda develops medicalized theories of karma, yoga, dharma, and a psychological approach to divinity to argue that faults of human awareness are the root cause of climate crises. To this end, I analyze the etiology and symptomatology of “faulty awareness” (prajñāparādha), which Ayurveda treats as one of the basic causes of all disease. The category of “faulty awareness,” I show, overlaps conceptually with discourses on the decline of the yugas and the disappearance of the gods from the world. Echoing coeval sources like the Mahābhārata, Arthaśāstra, and Aśoka’s edicts, Ayurveda forges an understanding of climate crises that posits a fundamental and necessary interrelation between the fields of medicine, religion, ethics and politics. Luke Whitmore, University of Wisconsin, Steven's Point The Land of the Gods is Not Sustainable: Religion and Climate Change in the Uttarakhand Himalaya Abstract In this paper I will argue that the abundant reservoir of religious ecological beliefs and practices found in the Garhwal region (located within the Indian state of Uttarakhand) at present demonstrate insufficient power to support major forms of climate change adaptation and mitigation because the power of these resources is outweighed by the economic logic of religious tourism in the state. I make this argument with reference to years of fieldwork in the Kedarnath valley, one of the most significant contexts for religious tourism in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Responding Tulasi Srinivas, Emerson College

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