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.


	A23-104 AAR's Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity Unit and SBL's John the Baptist Unit Theme: Book Review: John of History, Baptist of Faith Saturday, 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 310B (Third Level) Nathan Shedd, Johnson University, Presiding This session will review James F. McGrath's new book about John the Baptist titled John of History, Baptist of Faith: The Quest for the Historical Baptizer (Eerdmans 2024). Panelists Adela Yarbro Collins, Yale University Joel Marcus, Duke University Clare Rothschild, Lewis University Charles Haberl, Rutgers University, Camden Cecilia Wassen, Uppsala University Edmondo Lupieri, Loyola University Chicago Responding James McGrath, Butler University
	M23-106 National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion NABPR Theme: National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Open Meeting Saturday, 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM Grand Hyatt-Coronado E (Fourth Level) Please join us for coffee, fellowship, a plenary address by Ben Cowan (UC San Diego), and an address by NABPR President, João Chaves (Baylor University)
	P23-108 Society for Hindu-Christian Studies Theme: The Role of Context in Hindu-Christian Engagement Saturday, 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM Grand Hyatt-America's Cup CD (Fourth Level) This panel examines a variety of contextual factors that motivate Hindus and Christians to engage with and draw upon insights from each other's religious traditions. Instead of focusing on a single theme or historical period, this panel juxtaposes political, geographical, domestic, autobiographical, ethical, and critical approaches to context in order to widen our field of vision as we consider the possible roles of context in shaping Hindu-Christian engagement. Papers will be brief in order to accommodate a diversity of perspectives, illustrate the potential of divergent methodologies, and expand our understanding of the role of context in Hindu-Christian studies. 11:00 a.m. - BUSINESS MEETING
	P23-104 Søren Kierkegaard Society Theme: Emerging Scholars Saturday, 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 310A (Third Level) Lee Barrett, Moravian University, Presiding . Amber Bowen, University of Aberdeen Phenomenology and Philosophical Hermeneutics Abstract . Tekoa Robinson, Villanova University Constructive and Systematic Theology and Spirituality Abstract . Troy Wellington Smith, University of California, Berkeley Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, Book History Abstract . Donnell Williamson, Brown University Philosophy of Religion Abstract . Business Meeting Michael Strawser, University of Central Florida, Presiding
	M23-102 Booth University College Theme: Salvation Army Scholars and Friends Annual Meeting Saturday, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 305 (Third Level) Rebecca Carter-Chand, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandell Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Presiding Sponsored by the Centre for Salvation Army Studies—a research institute at Booth University College in Winnipeg, Canada—this event provides a venue for scholarship on the Salvation Army. This year’s paper presentations are focused on the following theme: “The Salvation Army and Race”. Anyone interested in the academic study of the Salvation Army is welcome to attend. Isaiah Allen, Booth University College The Salvation Army and Race: A Biblical Analysis Abstract . Andrew Eason, Booth University College No Respecter of Persons: George Scott Railton’s Views on Race Abstract . Kenneth C. Davis, Arizona State University The Salvation Army USA’s National Dilemma: The Historical Lack of Black Officers in Top Leadership Positions Abstract . Melissa N. Jones, The Salvation Army (Seattle) The Disproportionate Effect of Homelessness on Black Americans and How the Salvation Army Can Turn the Tide Abstract .
	P23-107 Niebuhr Society Theme: Book Panel on The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy (Lexington, 2023) Saturday, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Grand Hyatt-America's Cup AB (Fourth Level) Joshua Mauldin, Center of Theological Inquiry, Presiding In light of recent discussions on the challenges facing democracy, the Niebuhr Society will host a panel discussion on the book, The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy (Lexington, 2023). Panelists Laura Alexander, University of Nebraska, Omaha John Carlson, Arizona State University Elise Edwards, Baylor University Charles Mathewes, University of Virginia Scott Paeth, DePaul University Responding Rebekah Miles, Southern Methodist University
	P23-103 Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality Theme: SSCS Presidential Address and Annual Meeting Saturday, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Convention Center-11A (Upper Level West) Shannon McAlister, Fordham University, Presiding 2024 Presidential Address: Dr. Michael O'Sullivan, S.J., Co-Founder and Executive Director of Spirituality Institute for Research and Education (SpIRE), "Authentic Subjectivity as a Lens for Studying Spirituality." 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM. Annual Meeting: Dr. Shannon McAlister, Fordham University, presiding. 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM. All are welcome. For more information on the Society and its events, please visit https://sscs.press.jhu.edu/; please send additional questions to Dr. Rachel Wheeler, SSCS Secretary, at wheelerr@up.edu. Panelists Michael O'Sullivan, Spirituality Institute for Research and Education and South East Technological University
	A23-120 Tours Theme: Critical Mission Studies: California Indian Perspectives on the Spanish Missions Saturday, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Offsite-Offsite This bus tour challenges the romantic, fantasy narratives about the Spanish missions that are a core part of California's tourist industry. Centering California Indian perspectives this tour returns to historical sites to learn about Indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization and mission. This tour will be led by Dr. Stanley Rodriguez (Santa Ysabel Band of the Iipay Nation), president of Kumeyaay Community College, and member of the State of California Native Heritage Commission. Dr. Rodriguez will provide a critical perspective on California mission history which focuses on the Kumeyaay (who burned down Mission San Diego in 1775). The tour includes Mission San Diego, a visit to a burial site of Kumeyaay ancestors who resisted missionization, a Kumeyaay Native garden and cultural site, and a Kumeyaay crafts gift shop in Old Town San Diego. This tour requires pre-registration. If you pre-registered for this tour please see this important information. Meet your tour guides and bus outside of the convention center in front of Hall F (city side of the convention center) at 8:45 a.m. The tour will depart promptly at 9:00 a.m. Remember to wear comfortable shoes. This tour is rain or shine.
	Exhibit Hall Theme: AAR Exhibit Hall Booth Saturday-Tuesday, 9am-5pm .
	Exhibit Hall Theme: Exhibit Hall Saturday-Tuesday, 9am-5pm .
	P23-111 Colloquium on Violence and Religion Theme: Intersections of Mimetic Theory: Theological Insights and Societal Responses Saturday, 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 309 (Third Level) Chelsea King, Sacred Heart University, Presiding The first paper explores the relationship between mimetic desire and knowledge, juxtaposing Girard’s theory with insights from the contemplative masterpiece The Cloud of Unknowing. It argues that true knowledge—far from being a mere collection of facts—emerges from the transformation of desire, moving from rivalry to peace. This interdisciplinary approach challenges conventional understandings of cognition, emphasizing the integral roles of affect and embodiment. The second paper stages a critical conversation between Girard’s views on societal responses to disaster and the observations made by Rebecca Solnit in A Paradise Built in Hell. While Girard perceives social disasters as breeding grounds for mimetic violence and scapegoating, Solnit identifies a contrasting human tendency towards altruism, solidarity, and mutual aid in the face of crises. This paper explores the conditions under which these seemingly opposite reactions occur, proposing that societal responses to disaster may hinge on the prevailing social models and narratives. Susan McElcheran, University of St. Michael's College, Toronto School of THeology Contemplation as Positive Mimesis: Desire and Knowledge in The Cloud of Unknowing* and Mimetic Theory* Abstract This paper brings mimetic theory into dialogue with contemplative theology, using resources from both these disciplines to challenge the view that knowledge is merely the acquisition of facts. Such a conception of knowledge ignores increasing scientific evidence that affect, embodiment, and reason are linked in the process of cognition. A view of knowledge that ignores its affective, embodied component is unable to explain why human knowledge is becoming more polarized as factual scientific understanding grows. In this paper I consider the relation of desire to knowledge in René Girard’s mimetic theory and in the contemplative text The Cloud of Unknowing. Mimetic theory analyzes the roots of illusion and self-deception in rivalrous imitative desire. The paper claims that a reading of The Cloud in relation to mimetic theory will discover a way toward freedom from this self-deception, and so to true knowledge, through the transformation of desire from rivalrous to pacific. Kristoff Grosfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary Is God Violent? Mimetic Theory, Divine (Non)Violence, and the Possibility of Doing Theology Abstract Peace-talk is incoherent because we do not have one definition of the word “peace.” Everyone has different understandings of this term, and thus we cannot help but selfishly impose our understandings of peace onto someone else’s understandings of peace. With the help of Augustine of Hippo, we underscore this issue through an analysis of disordered desire; in addition, with the help of French theorist René Girard and his theory of mimesis (which very much has an Augustinian flavor in terms of its low theological anthropology) we emphasize how humanity cannot help but disorder even the noblest of endeavors such as just peacemaking. Therefore, this essay argues that humanity’s peace presents a mimetical trap that needs to be broken from above via a divine disruption that is simultaneously violent and nonviolent. Divine violence can spur up hope and hence can affect the way one does theology today in the saeculum.
	P23-110 Karl Barth Society of North America Theme: Karl Barth -- On nationalism, politics, and Christian witness Saturday, 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 410A (Fourth Level) Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia, Presiding Karl Barth -- On Nationalism, Politics, and Christian Witness Sara Mannen , University of Aberdeen The Intersection of Providence and Nothingness: Neighbors, Nations, and Nationalism Abstract What is God’s providential relationship to the nations and nationalism? This paper seeks to constructively connect how Barth’s theology reckoned with nationalism and nations with his doctrine of divine providence and das Nichtige. This paper contends that Barth’s positive and negative distinctions between nationhood and nationalism parallel the distinctions he makes between providence and Nothingness. This paper briefly describes Barth’s positive account of nations as part of God’s providential overruling of the world-occurrence and related to God’s right-hand and positive willing. Further, this paper argues that when nations fail to remain open and peaceable toward their neighbors—by seeking to become a totality—nationhood has morphed to nationalism. Barth’s vehement opposition to nationalism, its destruction, and “national gods” means nationalism can be best understood as a virulent manifestation of Nothingness that exists only under left-hand of God’s rejecting will as that which is overcome in Christ’s death and resurrection. Breno Seabra, Karl Barth and Christian Nationalisms in Brazil Abstract In this paper, I will first critically analyze the recent rise of Christian Nationalism in Brazil and the US by engaging the work of scholars like Benjamin A. Cowan and Willie James Jennings. After a brief provisional exploration of social diagnosis, I propose Karl Barth's theology as a potentially fruitful correcting theological force against religious nationalism movements. In particular, Barth's Christ-centered theological anthropology exposed in CD IV/1, § 58.1, and § 58.2 offers us a useful theological tool to counter the collapsing of religious and national identity underlying these movements. I will develop Barth's insight by engaging Kathryn Tanner's work Christ the Key, where Tanner develops a Christ-centered view of human nature as radically "open-ended," corresponding to an "apophatically-focused anthropology." I will conclude with practical suggestions of how this theological view of human identity might foster new forms of political resistance in Brazil and the United States. Christopher Choi, University of Virginia Theologizing Insurgent Grounds: An Experiment with Karl Barth Abstract This paper engages Karl Barth’s theology as a potentially generative resource for exploring the theological dimensions of a resurgent form of collective protest and assembly. Specifically, this paper theologically explores the reclamation, repurposing, and renaming of grounds that we have witnessed in uprisings against police violence and, more recently, encampments on college campuses protesting the ongoing destruction of Gaza. I examine Barth’s own confrontation with and theological critique of state violence, developed in the first edition to the Römerbrief. I highlight elements of his critique that are generative for theologizing insurgent grounds. At the same time, I contend that Barth’s theological dialectic reinscribes the state’s territorial claim over the grounds of social possibility, a claim that excludes possibilities originating from and cultivated upon insurgent grounds. I conclude the paper by turning to James Cone’s theopolitical response to the racial protests and uprisings of the late ‘60s as an alternative site of engagement.
	P23-101 Adventist Society for Religious Studies Theme: ASRS Sabbath Church Services Saturday, 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM Grand Hyatt-Coronado A (Fourth Level) Adventist Society for Religious Studies Sabbath Christian Church Services Devotional Panel Discussion Worship Service
	P23-102 North American Association for the Study of Religion Theme: Business Meeting Saturday, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Grand Hyatt-Balboa A-C (Second Level - Seaport Tower) Annual NAASR Business Meeting.
	P23-113 La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion Theme: Mision integral en contexto: Latino/a Evangelical Scholars in the Academy Saturday, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 309 (Third Level) Erica Ramirez, Auburn Seminary, Presiding Roundtable discussion by Latino/a scholars from the AAR/SBL on the challenges and opportunities for Evangelical Latino/a scholars in the academy. The topic of misión integral (an understanding of Christian mission that embraces both evangelism and social responsibility) brings together mainline, evangelical, and Pentecostal Latino/a Christians in a shared missional commitment. Followed by the annual business meeting of La Comunidad. Session is co-sponsored by the Latino/a Biblical and Theological Reflection Unit of the Evangelical Theological Society. Panelists Elaine Padilla, University of La Verne M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas), Wheaton College Oscar Garcia-Johnson, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III, Vanguard University Sophia Magallanes, North Park Theological Seminary
	M23-114 University of Divinity Theme: Figuring the Maternal in Political Theology Saturday, 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM Omni-Gaslamp 3 (Fourth Floor) Taking its cue from political and theological discourses, political theology has often taken recourse to paternity, sovereignty, inheritance, etc., in order to think its conceptual coordinates. Even as those coordinates are offered for critique, this session will explore the elision of the figure of the mother in political theology. What of the mother in the making of political theology? Papers will be presented by Amaryah Shaye Armstrong Miguel Vatter Janice McRandal Scott Kirkland
	A23-148 American Academy of Religion Theme: Plenary I - Exploring Nonviolence: Social Justice, Gender, and the Brain Saturday, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire AEI (Fourth Level) Jin Y Park, American University, Washington, D.C., Presiding How do we define nonviolence? What does the practice of nonviolence entail? Can nonviolence be an efficient way to counter violence and create social justice, including gender justice? Can nonviolence be violent as well? Can neuroscience help us understand the impacts of violence and nonviolence on our bodies and minds? In this panel, three scholars explore these questions and more to enrich our understanding and practice of nonviolence and explore its social impact. William Edelglass (Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Smith College), “Violence, Nonviolence, and Antiviolence in B. R. Ambedkar’s Buddhist Thought” Karma Lekshe Tsomo (University of San Diego), “Buddhism and Gender Justice: The Violence of Subordination” Fadel Zeidan (University of California San Diego), “How Disentanglement of the Self Can Lead to Nonviolence and Compassion: Insights from the Brain” Panelists William Edelglass, Emerson College Karma Lekshe Tsomo, University of San Diego Fadel Zeidan, University of California, San Diego
	A23-149 Status of LGBTIQ+ Persons in the Professions Committee Theme: Queer and Trans Scholars' Mentoring Lunch Saturday, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Convention Center-20D (Upper Level East) Melissa M. Wilcox, University of California, Riverside, Presiding The Committee on the Status of LGTBIQ+ Persons in the Professions cordially invites all LGBTIQ+ scholars, of all ranks and places/forms of employment/under-employment, to join us for our annual mentoring lunch. This year, instead of inviting specific mentors, we welcome all scholars interested in offering mentoring, receiving mentoring, or both. Table topics will include mid-career scholars, administrators & senior scholars, wellness and joy, publishing your first book, journal publishing, the job market, navigating grad school, and careers beyond the ivory tower. In order to make the mentoring lunch as accessible as possible, we do not require pre-registration and we do not provide pre-paid lunches; attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches if they want or need to do so. Panelists Eziaku Nwokocha, University of Miami
	A23-147 Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee Theme: Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee Luncheon with Open Discussion Saturday, 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM Convention Center-1B (Upper Level West) Patrick Reyes, Auburn Seminary, Presiding This AAR member luncheon requires an advance purchase. Add this to your registration by MODIFYING your AAR Annual Meeting registration. Tickets not available after October 31. Panelists Willie J. Jennings, Yale University
	M23-111 Baker Academic Theme: “Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament” Contributor Lunch Saturday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM Marriott Marquis-Torrey Pines 2 (North Tower - Lobby Level) Baker Academic hosts a luncheon with editors and contributors to the Word and Spirit series to celebrate the release of their inaugural volumes.

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Online Program Book