Online Program Book

In the United States, the first four months of 2021 witnessed two highly publicized episodes of deadly violence targeting those of Asian descent. The violence against Asian women in Atlanta and against Sikhs at the FedEx facility in Minneapolis are but recent chapters in a long history of discrimination and violence against minoritized groups in North America. The Covid-19 pandemic has served to exacerbate inequalities and violence along racial, class, ethnic, gender, and religious lines. At the same time, this violence has given rise to new solidarities and alliances across boundaries. Such initiatives have taken various forms including public protests, vigils, and increased visibility on a range of social media platforms. How might those in the Academy and/or in activist organizations address the possibilities and limitations of solidarity in relation to unfolding anti-Asian violence? In what ways might academic scholarship intersect with activism and movement building across various religious, ethnic, class, gender, and racial boundaries? What are the potential possibilities and problems of such interactions? How might competing conceptions of 'Asianness' impact academic and community solidarity? This roundtable seeks to think through the possible sites and forms of scholarly engagement in these increasingly brazen moments of anti-Asian violence. This session is cosponsored by the Sikh Studies Unit and the Asian North America Religion, Culture, and Society Unit (ANARCS).

In accordance with the theme for AAR 2021, Religion, Poverty, and Inequality: Contemplating Our Collective Futures, this Exploratory Session seeks to establish the following new unit in the AAR: Theology of Desmond Tutu Unit. In this Roundtable session, three panelists are invited to discuss three major aspects of Tutus legacy: Ubuntu, Spirituality and Restorative Justice. Panelists will interrogate the relationship among these three concepts in Tutu’s legacy in order to imagine a better collective future for humanity and creation. In so doing, panelists will reflect on Tutu’s vision of an equitable world in which divine and human interdependence is not optional but necessary. The balance of this Exploratory Session will focus on the goal of establishing this new unit on Tutu’s theology. We will discuss future topics, collaborative sessions and how to place Tutu in conversation with theological figures and subjects in a manner that honors and sustains Tutu’s legacy.

Environmental justice is often framed as a struggle between people who are willing to impose on the environment and people who advocate for a reduction of human imposition on it. In the new book Thoreau’s Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and Political Asceticism (Cambridge, 2021), Alda Balthrop-Lewis presents a radical alternative to this frame through a reinterpretation of Henry David Thoreau’s most famous work, Walden. Balthrop-Lewis reads Thoreau’s asceticism in Walden Woods as a form of religious practice dedicated to cultivating a just, multispecies community. Different models of environmental justice emerge from this reading, replacing a desire to reduce violence on the environment with a complex politics of delight in the environment and refusal of violence against it. This roundtable brings together leading scholars in environmental ethics, religious ethics, and political thought to discuss the promise and perils of this new frame for ecological and environmental justice.

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Ecclesiastes has always presented itself as an enigmatic book in the Hebrew Bible. In what Catholic scholar Peter Kreeft called “the greatest of all books of philosophy,” it seems to lend itself to varied interpretations and possibilities. What lasting impact has Qoheleth had in developing a scriptural anthropology and an understanding of God? In what ways does Ecclesiastes anticipate and answer the conditions of modernity in alienation, confusion, estrangement, and anomie? How are we to read and interpret its central theme? The Panel seeks to answer these questions and engage the audience in two rich philosophical understandings of the book.

This panel is a roundtable discussion of the religious politics and economic promotions of U2's Bono. It takes the recent publication of Chad Seales's Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism as an occasion to reflect critically on the promises and perils of corporate philanthropy and global entrepreneurship in a neoliberal marketplace enchanted with evangelical desire. Panelists will discuss topics ranging across the history, politics, and theology of white American evangelicals alongside the rise of Bono as a pop culture icon, his preaching of consumer love for Africans in need, and his stewardship of corporate campaigns for humanitarian aid and economic development in Africa. The goal of the conversation will be to think critically together about promises made to alleviate global poverty by way of interventions that benefit the richest and most powerful individuals, corporations, and institutions in the world.

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