Online Program Book

This session aims to explore the significant contributions of the anthropological perspective to Jain Studies, highlighting the work of both emerging and senior scholars who have conducted extensive fieldwork in India. Ethnographic methods and anthropological concepts have played a constitutive role in shaping the field of Jain Studies. Participants will reflect on how these approaches have influenced their own scholarship and fieldwork with Jain communities, fostering understanding of Jain society and practice. In light of the recent passing of anthropologist Lawrence A. (Alan) Babb, this panel also serves as a tribute to the influence of his scholarship and enduring legacy in the field. Through engaging overlaps and intersections of anthropology and Jain Studies around positionality in the field, ritual culture and practice, social organization, and theory, this conversation aims to stimulate critical dialogue and inspire fresh insights into the changing dynamics of Jain culture and society and its academic study.

This session explores the ways APIA communities in the United States have navigated the various state institutions and theological discourses that enact, perpetuate, and enforce the organizing logics of American secularism. It will open with a historical analysis of the theological presuppositions built into the nation's secularist legal regimes as they applied to Chinese laborers, followed by a contemporary exploration of processes by which Hindu ritual practices at a New Jersey temple have been reshaped to address secular assumptions of American life. A final paper then returns to the late-nineteenth century to scrutinize how the translation practices of Japanese Pure Land Buddhists influenced the community's legibility as "religion" within the American context.

The papers in this session engage Bonhoeffer's thought in relation to politics and various political theology discourses, including secularism and Christian nationalism; queer theory; global and racial capitalism; whiteness, fascism, anti-racism, and anti-Semitism; and retributive justice and violence.

Confucian contemplation, particularly quiet-sitting meditation, has been historically overlooked in contemplative studies. This is despite its deep integration in Confucian traditions, where figures like Cheng Yi and Yang Shi viewed it as crucial for moral self-cultivation and active engagement with the world. Zhu Xi's evolving stance further illuminated its philosophical depth. The underrepresentation is partly due to the practice's societal integration, the absence of texts with detailed techniques, and the scholarly necessity to reinterpret and recontextualize these traditions after their decline in modern times.The papers session advocates for including the Ruist perspective in global research, noting its potential relevance to modern professionals akin to ancient Ru scholars. It includes papers exploring early Chinese ritual fasting, the philosophical dimensions of quiet-sitting in the lineage of pattern-principle learning, Zhu Xi's meditation interpreted through a Chinese Catholic lens, and the efficacy of Confucian practices in contemporary pedagogy of liberal arts.

Michel Foucault labeled counter-spaces that influence, contest, mirror, and invert as heterotopias. Paper one considers heterotopia through transformations of a plot of land in Colorado, unveiling environmental challenges, adaptations, and the interplay of sacred spaces facing climate-related shifts. The second, co-authored paper offers a dialogic analysis of two U.S. social institutions – early nineteenth century prisons and mid twentieth century sexual closets – at a key moment in their historical formations. In the dialectic between imagined and materialized, they each produce another heterotopia – queer and spectral in form – in which other worlds are imagined, queering the hetero of heterotopia. The third, multi-authored paper showcases innovative ethnographic research of a revival of Victorian era-style spiritualism underway in British public houses (‘pubs’), the latest collective space for contemporary spirit communication. The fourth paper examines the ambiguous utopia/heterotopia that is the Métis community of Ste Madeleine in Manitoba, destroyed by the settler government.

If esoteric religious practices are, by definition, "hidden," then who exactly do they exclude, and what are the social consequences of such exclusions? This panel examines the relationship between esoteric practice and violent ideology in three diverse historical and cultural circumstances. From the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, these panelists explore the interconnections between esotericism and discourses of universalism and traditionalism. These panelists demonstrate some of the ways in which esoteric discourses of prisca theologica and secrecy can and have led to intolerant and violent cultural formations.