You are here

Online Program Book

All Times are Listed in Mountain Standard Time (MST)

A18-402

Theme: Envisioning Career Futures: A Workshop for PhDs and graduate students

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

This workshop is for graduate students who are interested in exploring career possibilities outside of the faculty path in higher education. Borrowing from Bill Burnett and Dave Evan’s design approach to careers, we will reframe our doctoral training and experiences from the perspective of the “squiggly career” (Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper), using a values inventory and case studies of humanities PhDs who work outside of academia. This workshop is also an opportunity for participants to begin building networks and community online, particularly through LinkedIn. Some pre-work will be required of participants.

Panelists

A18-403

Theme: Dialogue with ChatGPT and Bard: What are They Teaching About Religion?

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

As people begin to engage sophisticated chatbots, religious queries surely come up. What are ChatGPT and Bard teaching about religion and religions? What are people asking them, and how do they contribute to public understanding? Join in a live conversation with the chatbots, guided by interlocutors, so we may together explore the implications of AI as participants in our multifaith world.

A18-404

Theme: The Labor of our Hands

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

The three papers in this panel discuss the presidential theme for 2023 AAR, La Labor de Nuestras Mano (The work of our hands). The first paper on a handsewn prayer book from 20th-century Hungary explores questions of devotion, agency, and subjectivity through a single object: suggesting the study of devotion needs not to be a study of the devoted and arguing that through conscious, intentional practice, a space comes into being where the devotee encounters the divine and in so doing displaces the self. The second paper on the Palkaran Textiles community and their narratives in contemporary Tamil Nadu, India, examines how the Palkaran community embraces the theology of their textiles, utilizing the language and labor to divinize their art practice, as a response to growing violence garment laborers experience in South Asia. Finally, the third paper explores the metalworks of blacksmiths and sculptors who re-purpose weapons by transforming objects of destruction into objects with creative purpose, generating possibilities within the intransigent reality of interlocking systems that produce and distribute guns, and illustrating metalwork to provide a context for critical reflection on the dangers of normalizing the constraint and romanticizing the moral agent.

 

  • Abstract

    This paper explores questions of devotion, agency, and subjectivity through a single object: a handsewn prayer book from 20th-century Hungary. Though devotion is often explored through the individual lives, words, and actions of devotees, in this paper I suggest that the study of devotion need not be a study of the devoted. Attending to its content and to the material object itself, I examine the physical and intellectual labor of devotion and argue that devotion demands not subjectivity but multiplicity. Beyond the content of the prayers, the marginalia, handwritten notes, and the stitches themselves attest to the jumble of people and hands and lives that have passed through the life of this book. This prayer book shows how devotion itself is a labor-intensive process. I argue that through conscious, intentional practice, a space comes into being where the devotee encounters the divine and in so doing displaces the self.

  • Abstract

    The Palkaran community, known for their heritage in textile weaving, has witnessed an expansive history as their ancestors migrated from the northwestern region of South Asia to its southeastern coast. Over time, Palkaran artists imbued their distinct self-expression in South Indian art—all of which subtly weave the Palkaran identity into a Tamil landscape. Nowhere, however, is it quite clear that Palkarans maintained a unique, hybrid identity than in their textile art. This paper explores the author’s ethnographic fieldwork with the Palkaran community, an art historical encounter elaborating textiles attributed to this community, and how Palkaran people utilize language and labor to divinize their art practice. This presentation will examine how Palkaran weavers embrace the theology of their textiles as a response to growing violence garment laborers experience in South Asia and the contradictory cult image found throughout modern India depicting the faceless weaver as a particularly “Indian” sort of liberation.

  • Abstract

    This paper explores moral agency under constraint through the metalwork of blacksmiths and sculptors who re-purpose weapons. By transforming objects of destruction into objects with creative purpose, they generate possibilities within the intransigent reality of interlocking systems that produce and distribute guns. They illustrate moral agency under constraint because they claim creative power to pursue a good under conditions that thwart its realization. Through their vision and artistry, these metalworkers generate possibilities within structures of violence that do not change. Metalwork also provides a context for critical reflection on the dangers of normalizing the constraint and romanticizing the moral agent.

A18-405

Theme: Religion, Health Policies, and Beyond

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

tbd

  • Abstract

    What are the proper ends of medicine? Some bioethicists—particularly religions ones—have argued that the proper end of medicine is health. The healing view of medicine, however, rules out things like gender-affirming care, vasectomies, and physician-assisted death. Bioethicists who object to the healing view of medicine have argued that medicine is aimed instead at the patient values. In this paper, I argue against both of these views and instead offer an alternative—what I call the flourishing view of medicine. According to the flourishing view of medicine, the proper end of medicine is human flourishing. If my account is right, religious bioethicists cannot oppose procedures such as gender-affirming care or physician-assisted suicide merely on the grounds that they do not contribute to health. What instead they must show is that they do not contribute to human flourishing.

  • Abstract

    Recent approaches to medical education – most especially in the training of doctors and health care professionals – have emphasized the values of “Social Accountability,” defined by the World Health Organization as “the obligation [of medical schools] to direct their education, research and service activities towards addressing the priority health concerns of the community, region, and/or nation they have a mandate to serve.” But what is the character of that obligation? How is Social Accountability conceptualized in relation to societies and their institutions or the pursuit of social justice and care? This paper draws upon the emerging body of literature on Social Accountability and connects its implicit values and ways of representing the relationship between societies and their institutions with the scholarly study of religion and the formation of social bonds of trust that span the division between religion and secularity.

  • Abstract

    Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking is a legal means of hastening death through refusal of food and fluids – a topic rarely addressed in Christian Protestantism. Leveraging the well-established and validated Theory of Planned Behavior, this research elucidates clergy and congregants’ normative beliefs and anticipated tactical support for VSED, including their reactions to Christian-based justifications for this end-of-life option. Such reasoning includes that VSED is a “fast into eternal life” and is based on the example of Jesus Christ, who, in the face of ongoing suffering, determined the end of his own life when he stated, “It is finished,” and gave up his spirit – an insight originally argued by John Donne in Biathanatos (1647/1982). This qualitative research study reveals that individuals aiming to VSED in the face of terminal illness may have their intention affirmed by a church community, but will likely require additional caregiving support to achieve a hastened death.

  • Abstract

    In a recent paper titled “Whole body gestational donation,” Anna Smadjor endorses the practice of using the bodies of (wo)men who are brain stem dead to gestate foetuses. In this paper, I will set aside ethical evaluation of the practice of whole-body gestational donation and instead focus on what Smadjor’s argument implicitly assumes about what it means to be pregnant and what it means to “create new life,” to borrow her words. I ask the question: How does this “creation of new life” match with theological accounts of creation? I explore four interrelated theological areas to understand what it means for humans to be pregnant: co-creation, givenness, vulnerability, and mutual asymmetry. It is my contention that Smadjor’s argument is based on the fundamental conception of pregnancy as the gestation of a foetus within a vessel rather than the intersubjective and interpersonal relationship between a mother and a child.

A18-406

Theme: Digital Space and Globally Networked Buddhist Communities

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Until recently, most scholarship on Buddhism in North America privileged the study of institutionalized Buddhist organizations. For example, few attempts have been made to study the lived experiences of North American Asian Buddhists and their lived religious practices in digital environments. Scholars have highlighted the idea of “global Buddhism” in the past decade, arguing that Buddhism in the West must be viewed as part of a worldwide transformational process. With the exponential development of digital technology, a global Buddhism approach has expanded and now encompasses the digital world, along with many issues such as digital Buddhist community and identity formation, digital rituals, digital Buddhist education, and the authenticity of digital Buddhist practices. Was the digital Buddhist community just a short-lived necessity, or is this the general direction of the future of Buddhist communities in North America? What does it mean to be globally networked Buddhist communities in a digital world?

  • Abstract

    On September 26, 2020, the perhaps first ever online Zen transmission ceremony occurred. Zen Master Hyon Ja received transmission from a Zen Master who was not in the same room or even the same country.  Similarly, several Inka ceremonies (authorization to teach within the Kwan Um School) have been conducted via Zoom since then. Scholars of contemporary Buddhism might wonder: What does it mean for “mind-to-mind transmission” to occur via pixels on a computer screen?  What other significant changes in Zen practice, prompted by the pandemic, need analysis?  This paper contributes to the study of pandemic-digital religion and the study of contemporary Zen Buddhism in America through a case study of the online-only arm of the Kwan Um School of Zen.  Based on interviews, participant observation, and archival analysis, this paper argues that the move online has created new social formations  and has significantly transformed how Zen Buddhism is practiced.

  • Abstract

    The COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing caused religious organizations to adapt to maintain relevancy or lose potential followers. The Foguangshan Buddhist temple in Raleigh reopened their temple for in-person weekly meetings two years after covid began, offering a mix of both online and local teaching, rituals, and news. This newly hybridized Chinese Buddhist sangha places the local community in closer connection to other FGS followers both within the United States as well as globally producing an enhanced transnational religious consciousness. Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s weeks long funerary rituals including the globally broadcast ceremony epitomizes the newly formed local-transnational connection. While the funeral was filmed at the FGS temple headquarters in Kaohsiung Taiwan each center around the world was filled with followers being guided how to act ritually by the funeral announcer. This paper argues FGS’s shift to a hybridized format produced a stronger transnational religious consciousness than previously possible.

  • Abstract

    Drawing on my online fieldwork conducted from early 2020 to the present, this paper examines how globally-networked Chinese Buddhist individuals and communities in French Canada utilize multiple digital platforms to study, and communicate and practice Buddhism. I argue that digital space can be viewed as a crucial religious arena with both secular and transcendent affordance for Chinese Buddhists to engage in cyber-Buddhist rituals, form virtual Buddhist communities, and promote alternative Buddhist practises. I want to argue that the internet is not merely a temporary solution for cyber-Buddhists, but rather this new form of practice, which has flourished and thrived during the pandemic, will become a more natural and enduring aspect of people's Buddhist experiences. Additionally, the digital space should not be viewed as a substitute for physical communities, but rather as a thriving “home” for a strong and prosperous North American Chinese virtual sangha.

     

     

A18-407

Theme: Rethinking with the Abhidharma Literature: Rhetoric, Metaphysics, and Ethics

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

This panel aims to explore new approaches to the study of the Abhidharma literature by placing it in the larger context of Buddhist intellectual history. A pitfall in the study of the Abhidharma tradition is the assumption of a progressive linear model based on the chronological order of thinkers and texts. What we can observe, however, is that the Abhidharma literature itself is intertextually complex and semantically multivocal. Moreover, themes in the Abhidharma literature are continually studied, revisited, debated, and adopted by later Buddhist thinkers, regardless of sectarian affiliation. Rather than being the early phase of Buddhist scholasticism in the singular, it is more appropriate to think of it as a heteroglossia, a source of inspiration, and eternal imagined opponents for perennial questions for Buddhist thought. In this panel, three papers discuss the continuing influence of the Abhidharma literature on rhetoric, metaphysics, and ethics.

  • Abstract

    Scholars of Vasubandhu (ca. 316-396) have long concluded that after his turn to Mahāyāna Buddhism, he eventually abandoned the concept of avijñapti rūpa, the unexpressed form, and attributed its function to volition (cetanā). In East Asian Yogācāra thinking, the influence of avijñapti rūpa, however, does not cease because of Vasubandhu’s change of position. In treaties on the interpretation of karma and the nature of precepts, Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist thinkers constructed the entire theory of monastic vow based on the concept of avijñapti rūpa. This paper reexamines the treatment of avijñapti rūpa in the context of its rejection by Yogācāra thinkers such as Vasubandhu, and its continued influence in East Asian Buddhism. Through the study of avijñapti rūpa, I argue that there is no unsurpassable division between Abhidharma and Mahāyāna doctrine, we should evaluate the influence of the Abhidharma literature beyond the attributed philosophical and doctrinal affiliation.

  • Abstract

    Passages in early suttas indicate that the twelve-linked dependent origination can be understood in terms of two models--the “epistemic” and the “embryonic” models. Later Abhidharma traditions tend to use mostly the “embryonic” model, little attention was paid to the “epistemic” model, and they appear to have difficulties reconciling these two models. Modern commentators such as Buddhadasa criticizes the Abhidharma interpretation but still cannot fill the gap between the two models. This study will survey different interpretations in both Pāli Abhidhamma and Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma, and see how ancient teachers attempted but failed to accommodate the two possible interpretations. I propose that the metaphysical presumption in Abhidharma traditions might be the cause of their difficulties. I also propose that the teaching of the “stations of consciousness” (viññāṇaṭṭhiti) indicates that epistemology and ontology were not clearly distinguished in early suttas, thus dependent origination carries both epistemic and ontological meanings.

  • Abstract

    The structure of Abhidharma texts is a very important aspect of Abhidharma scholasticism, but it is somehow less studied than its aspect of doctrines and teachings. This article will focus on the *Aṣṭaskandha/Jñānaprasthāna, a significant work within the early Sarvāstivāda canonical Abhidharma collection, and investigate especially its structural characteristics in three categories: (1) employment of question-answer format; (2) immediate supplementary glossing; and (3) other characteristics such as omission and abridgment. I will examine three types of structural devices used in the *Aṣṭaskandha (T.1543), including the opening list of questions, bundled questions, and question capsules. These structural characteristics show the *Aṣṭaskandha’s more rigid attitude towards indexing, which results in its more repetitive and explanatory format, and might greatly facilitate instruction and memorization. Such a rigid indexing system and its abundant repetition might be taken to suggest an oral quality for the *Aṣṭaskandha.

A18-408

Theme: Theology at Work: Three Professions and Catholic Thought

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

How might Catholic theology inform or transform ostensibly secular professions? This session explores this and related questions with an eye on three distinct arenas of work: higher education, industrial farming, and social work.

  • Abstract

    “The Catholic Psychoanalytic Theology of the American Social Work Profession”

    Since the death of theologian Aldolphe Tanquerey, in 1932, doctoral dissertations involving significant theological research in schools of social work have become virtually extinct. The vanishing of these dissertations represents a simultaneous vanishing of social work’s capacity to detect eremitic scriptures that are autochthonous to, and yet have remained undetected, in the profession. Since the death of Sigmund Freud, in 1939, doctoral dissertations involving significant psychoanalytic research in schools of social work have become virtually extinct. The vanishing of these dissertations represents a simultaneous vanishing of social work’s capacity to detect phylogenetic structures that are autochthonous to, and yet have remained undetected, in the profession. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a Catholic psychoanalytic theology that detects, tracks, and delineates social work’s eremitic scriptures and phylogenetic structures.

  • Abstract

    St. Ignatius of Loyola, when he established Jesuit schools and colleges in the sixteenth century, insisted that no tuition fees be charged to the students in order that the poor might participate with the rich. Today, student fees in some of our Catholic colleges are exceeding $60,000 a year.

    Should Catholic education include, as part of its mission, the goal of reducing the gap between the rich and poor?

    My thesis deals with the question: Is it time to insist again, as St. Ignatius did, that no tuition fees be charged to the students, or is Catholic education now so expensive that the Church should give up teaching general education (in those countries where the state provides for it) so that the resources could be used for Christian formation? And thus be able to provide “a preferential option for the poor”.

     

     

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the relationship between religious institutions and secular professions by examining how the Catholic Church has articulated its social, ecological, and economic principles within the Canadian agricultural industry. It first provides an overview of Canadian Catholic leadership’s approach to industry and the rights of workers, particularly as features of a global economy. In doing so, it highlights tensions surrounding the local and the global, themes which remain present in recent Catholic documents like Querida Amazonia and Fratelli Tutti. The paper then draws from ethnographic research carried out at three agricultural sites to illustrate the development of secular partnerships and perennial responses to migration, including one monk’s campaign to resettle climate refugees in central Saskatchewan. Such examples call attention to the ways religious institutions respond to rapid economic changes and the heightened public discourse around food security, globalization, and the rights of workers brought about by the global pandemic.

A18-409

Theme: Kevin Hector, Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology (2023)

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

A discussion of Kevin Hector's Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology (Yale University Press, 2023)

A18-410

Theme: Religious Studies Research: Haunted by the Specter of Violence?

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

In response to this year's Presidential theme, CARV seeks to foment a generative dialogue about how the "work of our hands" as religion scholars is descended from, complicit with, or otherwise appropriated to amplify any form of violence. The scholars featured on this panel, as well as the group discussion to follow, will engage with difficult questions about the historical legacies of violence; the fear of violence; active campaigns of violence; and/or the desire to use scholarship as a vehicle to either incite or resist violent actors. This panel’s ultimate purpose is thus to develop a discussion that assists religion scholars in reckoning with the ways in which their work knowingly or unknowingly contributes to discursive iterations of myriad species of violence. This session works intentionally from the margins to disrupt traditional systems of authority and ways of learning, knowing, and being in the world. 

  • Abstract

    Gender-based violence (GBV) is not a protected ground within the U.S. asylum system. For a victim of GBV to win asylum, they must connect the violence they suffered to persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group. Typically, legal practitioners propose that GBV is a form of political persecution, citing that all resistance to GBV is a form of feminist politics. Through an examination of asylum documents, I show how the assumption of a feminist subjectivity is an act of violence, that denies their clients’ religious identities and also actual, physical violence against the women when the U.S. deports her back into danger. I demonstrate how asylum-seeking women already utilize religious reasonings to describe their persecution, and thus argue that incorporating religion as a strategy to argue GBV cases could help prevent deportations. 

  • Abstract

    My paper explores the theological-aesthetic potential of qur’ānic verses that describe, sanction, or call for violence. Passages in the Qur’ān that feature or even revel in violence are commonly viewed as problematic. They are often ignored, essentialized, apologetically explained away, or reduced to their historical contingency. However, a narratively oriented, pre-imperial reading of such verses reveals their hermeneutic depth and opens new possibilities for their literary-aesthetic appreciation. I argue that violence in the Qur’ān serves a particular aesthetic-ethical purpose, that is, to urge believers to critical self-reflection and God-consciousness. Taking the Qur’ān seriously as both a linear text and a speech act aimed at rhetorical effect in particular historical situations directs our attention to the complexity of the reading process and challenges both textual and historical positivism.

  • Abstract

    The process of attending to the trauma of others is itself “traumagenic”-- that is, it can lead to traumatic overwhelm in the caregiver.  Yet religious practice and spirituality arise as indicators of resilience in the face of secondary traumatic stress and as a means of healing from it.  Spiritual practice is a mark of greater capacity in a trauma caregiver for attending to the trauma of others without folding under the traumatic pressure themselves.  This paper explores the way in which the “sacrifice” of caregivers enduring secondary traumatic stress helps to re-theorize sacrifice. The sacrifice seen in the sacred attention of those helping to heal the trauma of others exemplifies a form of sacrifice which is both nonviolent and oddly self sustaining rather than self depleting.  The re-theorized sacrifice of caregivers experiencing secondary traumatic stress offers a concrete example for theoretical engagements of sacred self sacrifice beyond violence.  

A18-411

Theme: Memorializing Massacres

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

As the use of the events at the Alamo in Texan self-understanding demonstrates, the memorialization of massacres can be socially useful but also controversial and problematic. This roundtable will examine ways in which massacres have been memorialized in several contexts, among them the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, Romania’s participation in the Holocaust, the memorialization of the slaughter of Imam Husayn and his family in Taʿziyih performances in Iran, and the Indian government’s memorialization of the massacre of Shri Govind Guru’s followers by British troops on Mangadh Hill. How have the communities concerned employed both traditional and contemporary technologies to memorialize such events? How have these memorializations changed over time? What are the significant material, social, psychological, economic, political, cultural, and religious dimensions of such memorializations? To what uses have they been put, and how effective have they been? We look forward to a lively discussion.

A18-412

Theme: Institutional Possibilities and Limits for Constructive Muslim Thought

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

In its third year, the “Constructive Muslim Thought and Engaged Scholarship” seminar continues to work towards better understanding and defining the nature of this developing and distinctive field. For this session, the participants have been invited to join a roundtable conversation aimed at exploring the institutional contexts and challenges that each face in pursuit their respective scholarship. Drawing upon their own experiences, each panelist has been invited to discuss the role, influence, and impact that different institutional settings play with respect to constructive Muslim thought and engaged scholarship. What does it mean to undertake this work at a seminary, a public university, a private college, a religiously-affiliated school, or within a predominantly secular institutional climate? What issues, concerns, or dilemmas can or have arisen and how might scholars navigate or challenge them? All seminar attendees are encouraged to join the conversation after the invited participants have shared their opening remarks.

A18-413

Theme: Muslim Economies, Charities, and Capitalism

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

This roundtable on Muslim economies and charities examines Muslim engagements with capitalism in the United States and South Asia. The first panelist examines critiques of late capitalism in global Muslim revivalist discourses in the mid-twentieth century. The second panelist explores the strategic choice of American Muslims to formalize charity into non-profits in the post-Cold War period and analyzes racialization and citizenship as factors that contributed to the uneven participation in this project. The third panelist looks at zakat projects in the contemporary US and India to illustrate how zakat marks out new domains of care, solidarity, and justice-seeking. The fourth panelist explores the “racial” in racial capitalism by extending the analytic to frame Muslim engagements with capitalism in postcolonial contexts, with a special focus on Pakistan’s Islamic banking industry. The final panelist discusses possibilities for anti-racist economies with a special emphasis on organizing to invest in local communities.

A18-414

Theme: Tillichian Cartographies and Hip-Hop Aesthetics

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

The Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture and the Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion and the Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture Unit seeks paper proposals for a cosponsored panel on the contemporary cultural and artistic scene's disclosure of intersections between Paul Tillich and religious sensibilities expressed within Hip-hop. The music of Kendrick Lamar would be a case in point. We invite papers exploring new cartographies in Tillichian thought that center a scholarly use of Hip-hop as a cultural resource for thinking and rethinking through Tillichian theological and methodological approaches in the study of religion. We are especially interested in papers that address the following issues: Hip-hop, culture, and correlation; theology of culture and embodiment; theology and aesthetics; complex subjectivity, estrangement, and the “New Being”; Christian existentialism and the Black radical tradition; racial narcissism and Black existentialism.

A18-415

Theme: Neidan Masters and the Educated Public: Engaging Moral Philosophy, Literati Culture, Medicine and Shifting Gender Roles

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

“Neidan 內丹” (internal alchemy) refers to meditation methods that draw upon the metaphysics and metaphor-laden terminology of laboratory alchemy.  Neidan methods were developed and propagated primarily (but not exclusively) by Daoists from the Song period (960-1279) onward, though it remains unresolved as to how much earlier we ought to trace the origins of Neidan. 

Neidan did not develop within a Daoist bubble.  Daoist Neidan theorists and practitioners included both clergy (monastic and non-monastic) and laity who were intellectually curious and deeply engaged in the ideas and interests of the larger educated public.  This paper session features four presentations that highlight this engagement and demonstrate how it impacted the development of Neidan.  Among issues explored are how Neidan proponents engaged and incorporated Confucian moral philosophy and medical knowledge, accommodated their teachings to a growing female clientele, and how they were perceived and received by the literati.

 

 

 

 

  • Abstract

    This paper will discuss how the Neidan 內丹 and ritual theories of Bai Yuchan 白玉蟾 (1194?-1229) drew inspiration from Mencius 孟子 (ca. 372-289 B.C.E.).  Bai Yuchan equated the primal *qi* nurtured and accumulated through Neidan practice to the “flood-like *qi*” spoken of by Mencius and extolled its capacity to bestow moral virtues as well as vitality.  Bai Yuchan further articulated how the primal *qi* can enhance ritual power when performing the Thunder Rites.  The main sources for the discussion will be Bai Yuchan’s *Xuanguan xianbi lun* 玄關顯祕論, *Jingyu xuanwen* 靜餘玄問, *Haiqiong Bai zhenren yulu* 海瓊白真人語錄, and *Xuanzhu ge* 玄珠歌 commentary.  Morality, vitality, and ritual power were integrally linked in the view of Bai Yuchan.  In forming and articulating this view, he drew inspiration from Mencius.

  • Abstract

    This paper analyzes the views of Chinese literati towards the Daoist Quanzhen school全真教 As the Quanzhen school developed, it gradually attracted the interest of literati. Yuan Haowen 元好問 (1190-1257) and Wang Zheng 王憚 (1227-1304) are probably the best examples of this.  By analyzing their stele inscriptions, this paper will clarify what aspects of the Quanzhen school attracted the literati. The study will then examine poetic music dramas (known as *zaju* 雜劇) from the Yuan and Ming periods to clarify how people viewed the Quanzhen school. Many of the plays that remain today feature plots involving the Quanzhen school. These vividly reflect the image that the people of the time had of the Quanzhen School. Through this analysis, we will clarify what kind of image people had of the Quanzhen School in the Yuan and Ming periods.

  • Abstract

    In this preliminary study of *The Unitary Qi of the Way’s Origin* (ca.1636), I examine and reconstruct the late Ming inner alchemist and medical writer Cao Heng’s (fl.1630s) vision of body, etiology of gynecological disorders, and his meditative and gymnastic regimen aimed at restoring the balance and health of the female body for both social reproduction and transcendence. I also explore the religio-social context of Cao’s writings on women’s healing and transcendence practices during the late Ming era. I argue that Cao Heng’s meditative healing techniques not only reveal important trends and transformation in the late Ming era Daoist inner alchemy, but also contribute directly to the creation and emergence of women’s inner alchemy (*nüdan*女丹) in the early seventeenth century China, almost two hundred years earlier than we currently understand.

  • Abstract

    Zhu Yuanyu and Pan Jingguan (fl. 1667-1669) were Neidan practitioners who co-compiled *Cantong qi chanyou*, *Wuzhen pian chanyou*, and *Qiuzu yulu*. The first two books are commentaries to Neidan classics. The third book features the theory of “Circulating the Light”, which it proclaims to be transmitted from Qiu Chuji (1148-1227) down through the Dragon-gate lineage of the Complete Perfection School. This paper will analyze the alchemical methods of these books and the sense of legitimacy which is regarded or proclaimed to exist at the background of each method. It will further deal with the content and sense of legitimacy expressed in *Taiyi Jinhua zongzhi*, compiled by a spirit-writing cult to Patriarch Lü in which Pan Jingguan was an important member. This paper will demonstrate how lay Daoist practitioners in Qing period connected multiple layers of legitimacy through Neidan practice in order to achieve ethical stability. 

A18-416

Theme: Queer Studies, LGBTQI+ Lives, and Orthodox Christianity

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Orthodox-majority contexts, communities, and leaders often cause terrible harm to LGBTQ+ persons through homophobic violence, discourse, and policy. Sexual diversity is perhaps the most polarizing issue facing the modern Orthodox world—from the ecclesial discourse surrounding Pride parades and the conflict in Ukraine, to the Orthodox Church in America’s statement against discussing sexuality—and its real-life effects cannot be understated. Yet, international initiatives over the past decade as well as recent publications (Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality (Fordham, 2022) and Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy: Beyond Male and Female (Fordham, 2023)) have argued Orthodox tradition has resources within it to address issues of gender and sexuality with greater openness and theological consistency. This session features three papers that engage traditional patristic sources to explore what a queering of Orthodoxy and an Orthodox engagement with Queer Studies might look like.

  • Abstract

    The paper poses the question of whether the traditional teaching on deification can provide avenues for expanding the idea of holy sexual desire beyond monogamous lifelong marriage. A case can be made from within the Greek tradition that physical desire is a consequence of the growth in holiness in general, opening the way for a consideration of the goodness of sexual expressions in many forms. Drawing from three touchstones, Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, Dionysius the Areopagite’s Divine Names, and Symeon the New Theologian’s Discourses, I propose that desire that finds its object in God intensifies its pleasure in creatures. The final part of the paper reflects on what this means for expanding the Christian discussion of same-sex desire beyond the habitual channels of marriage parallelism.

  • Abstract

    Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua 41 famously requires humanity to overcome sexual differentiation in order to reach God. When humanity fails, the God-made-human accomplishes the task in himself. But how exactly does the singular event of the incarnation direct the re-creation of all human persons, particularly when sexual differentiation remains very much in evidence? This paper advances conversations already underway by acknowledging that the incarnation depends upon collaboration between Mary and God. Drawing from recent scholarship on Mary as well as work on gender identities and sex development, the paper argues that in the incarnation, Mary and Christ partner to mediate sex difference. This collaboration opens mediation to all other bodies. Moreover, Christ’s dependence upon Mary demonstrates how the virtues of mediation undercut gender essentialism as well as other forms of oppression. Finally, Mary’s actions in the incarnation disclose how God heals all human divisions predicated upon sex difference.

  • Abstract

    Maximus’s anthropology, especially his use of _logos_ (being) and _tropos_ (mode of being), offers a viewpoint favorable to gay inclusion by the traditional church (e.g., the Eastern Orthodox Church). In part, I interpret Maximus’s use of the virginal birth as an example of a sex act transcending Maximian consequences of sexual intercourse (pleasure, pain, decay, and death). This invites acceptance of human-human (rather than sexed) sexual intercourse and transcends the artificial barriers of sex and sexuality and the traditional moral impediments that accompany them. If sex distinction is affirmed as a postlapsarian expression of an otherwise transcendent, pre-fall human experience, then it seems likely sex acts between all sexes and sexualities (_tropos_) is one of love: one human for another, a perfect love which reaches to the core of an unchangeable humanness (_logos_).

A18-417

Theme: Making and Studying Sacred Space as Ecclesial Practice

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Central to the work of many religious communities is the creation of sacred space. From majestic stained-glass covered medieval Cathedrals to intimate living room ofrendas adorned with the images and the favorite foods of loved ones, the spaces that Christians construct to serve as sites of ecclesial practice are powerful symbols that embody the unique identities and values of those communities. So much so that the work of making spaces sacred can itself be considered a constitutive ecclesial practice. These papers employ qualitative research as a resource for reflection on the theological significance of the work that church communities do to build, cultivate, transform, and/or designate spaces as sites of sacred encounter. This panel focuses on a diversity of qualitative approaches to the study of ecclesial space, including autoethnography, visual ethnography, and interviews, and highlights the importance of such methods for ecclesial practices of making space.

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the results of three quite different qualitative research projects that illustrate how sacred space is created. First, a study of conceptions of the sacred among Polish migrants in Plymouth, UK resulted in photographs of church buildings used for ‘secular’ purposes. Participants viewed this as a transgression of the sacred intentions of the buildings. Second, a project to study how church attenders process life events in light of their faith will be discussed in terms of the importance of the physical setting of this encounter of the sacred – which most often was in a home or in nature. The theological imagination creates sacred space in these non-ecclesial venues. Finally, a project to study how discipleship is conceived in everyday life by young church attenders revealed that Instagram mediates a new realm of online, visual sacred space. The paper concludes that it is the theological imagination that enables each site – church, home, nature, and Instagram – to take on a sacredness that is transformative for those who enter it.

  • Abstract

    This paper presents the findings of qualitative studies of eight congregations (four in Canada, four in Germany) focused on the impact of having to shift to online interaction only during the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion highlights the many creative ways these congregations sought to create sacred space beyond the familiar environment of much-loved traditional buildings. From a pastor performing last rites virtually, the usual church service being delivered online, to creating worship in front of a seniors home, the pandemic forced church leaders to create new forms of space while interpreting their role anew, often with the assistance of lay people not previously engaged in such roles. The analysis engages Paul Wadell’s concept of friendship with God to draw out such new ways of relating were able to lead to transforming and meaningful experiences of community.

  • Abstract

    Crip ministers beside the font or behind the table disrupt expectations around who appears where and performs what role. Being in the chancel in some liturgical spaces or at the centre of a circle in others, the bodies of crip ministers and our need for help by devices and/or by others are on display. This presentation will examine how the exploration of crip space and time “pushes the boundaries of [able-bodied people’s] understanding and expectations” (s.e. smith, “The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disabled People,” in Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, ed. Alice Wong (New York, NY: Vintage, 2020), 273.) of embodied liturgical actions. When crip bodies (co)preside at the sacrament, the community is part of reimagining liturgical space and embodying a ritual of justice and hope where our bodies can encounter the risen disabled Christ in our own time and space.

  • Abstract

    In 2019, more than 70 parishes in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa received a white ceramic feather as a symbol of the church’s journey toward truthtelling and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada. This paper employs ethnographic theological methods to investigate the reception of the ceramic feather in each parish, including where and how it is installed in the ecclesial space and its initial and ongoing ritual functions. Drawing on literature associated with disaster ritual, architectural power, and memory, this research examines the possibilities and limitations of this dispersed art installation as a response to the protracted crisis of colonialism and as meaningful action toward transformed ecclesial relationships with unceded land and its original peoples.

A18-418

Theme: Matter’s Imaginaries: Commemorating the work of Charles Long on Religion, Matter, and Energy

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Charles Long’s tenure as president of the AAR. Long offered significant contributions to the study of religion broadly, but more specifically framed the emergence of the concept of “religion” in the wake of racial-extractivism. The modern construct of “religion”, therefore, assumes specific imaginaries of matter. Participants in this session have critically reflected on imaginaries of matter/energy and will offer reflections on the importance of Long’s work for the current study of religion. Panelists will also reflect specifically on the question of what the critical study of religion offers to existing discourses on energy and extraction humanities. Panelists will include: Jay Kameron Carter, Clayton Crockett, Mario Orospe, and Terra Schwerin Rowe. Opening interdisciplinary provocations will be offered by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson with concluding remarks on the ongoing reliance of Long’s work by Richard Callahan. 

A18-420

Theme: Workshop: Using Social Media for Public Scholarship of Religion

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Public scholarship programs not only reimagine doctoral education in ways that facilitate purposeful social contribution, the production of new and creative forms of scholarship and dissertations, but also support graduate students' broader career perspectives.

Social media platforms are one of the most accessible and easiest ways to contribute to public scholarship and have significant potential, not only for public scholarship but also recruitment, publicity, and networking for academics. Creating and maintaining a social media presence is now something very essential for graduate students.

This workshop will teach graduate students how they can use social media for public scholarship of religion and share strategies on how to navigate and post on social media platforms to build a social media presence and contribute to discussions on topics related to your expertise as well as connect with other academics.

A18-421

Theme: Secular "Saints"

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Secular "Saints":

Saints are often recognized by dynamics of veneration, emulation, and mediation of power. But the same dynamics can be seen in contemporary, secular society with the relationship between celebrity and fandom. Are celebrity and sanctity broadly analogous? This session asks how we might use the hagiological categories and approaches to better understand the phenomenon of “secular saints” and how this eventually informs the comparative study of the rhetoric of “sainthood.”

Some questions to consider:

  • How do celebrities, politicians, scientists, athletes, and activists embody holiness by another name?
  • How do secular “saints” mediate power to their devotees and to what end?
  • What (if any) is the analytical purchase of mapping celebrities as saints and celebrity as sanctity?

  • Abstract

    It is difficult to overstate the appreciation and reverence that followers show to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) for his work in improving the lives of people regarded as at the bottom of the caste hierarchy—Dalits or so-called “Untouchables.” Based on a recent year of field research among Ambedkarites in many global locations, exploring what Buddhism and being Buddhist means to them, my presentation focuses on ways in which they memorialize and speak about Ambedkar. While people often rely on religious language to describe this man, they do so in a way that positions him as historically unique and worthy of ultimate respect, without necessarily connoting anything divine or supernatural about him. In this modern, secular, disenchanted use of religious language among his followers, Ambedkar functionally has become a “secular saint” by virtue of his peerless status that seems practically necessary to invoke but nearly impossible to emulate.

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the relationship between secular saints and political martyrs, and illuminates the various ways by which communities invest death with political significance, consecrate it, and enshrine it in collective memory, where it subsequently resides as a resource for mobilization and identity formation. More particularly, it investigates the way in which a specifically political notion of martyrdom engages with notions of secularity and sainthood, as rival groups lay claim to the sanctified memories of role models of various sorts. A range of historical examples are provided, including King Charles I of England, Bobby Sands and the 1981 Irish hunger strikers, and George Floyd.

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the career and cultural afterlife of the American stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, who gained notoriety in the 1950s and 1960s for his irreverent satires of organized religion. It will explore how Bruce, despite his comedic irreverence, became hailed as a “prophet,” “evangelist,” “martyr,” and even, in the wake of his untimely death, a “saint.” For his supporters, Bruce embodied a commitment to free expression and authenticity in the face of religious hypocrisy and repression. In the end, the American entertainment industry and the emerging counterculture transformed a controversial comedian into a replacement spiritual authority for a segment of the country increasingly alienated from mainstream institutional religion.

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the secular hagiographical tradition in early modern China by examining the biographies of Wang Yangming (1472–1529), a Neo-Confucian philosopher who was the most influential “celebrity” of the “School of Mind” during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). While often considered a military leader and secular thinker of the elite, Wang Yangming in fact occupied both the secular and religious spheres. The development of print culture and different religious traditions in the late Ming dynasty resulted in popular biographical texts of various genres featuring Wang, including vernacular stories, illustrated manuals, lineage records, chronicles, plays, and recorded sayings. The author characterizes these texts as “secular Confucian hagiographies” and argues that they served to popularize and elevate Wang as a secular Confucian “saint” admired and idolized by people of different social classes, thus reshaping the history of Neo-Confucianism and popular literature in early modern China.

A18-422

Theme: Recasting Hindu Religious Spaces in Diaspora

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

By exploring ways Hindus in contemporary diasporic contexts continue to recast public, domestic, and digital spaces in the twenty-first century, this session proposes fames of anlaysis that reinforce the need toe extend scholarly discourse surrounding Hindu diasporic space beyond dyadic conceptions of “homeland” and “new or host lands.” Processes of recasting Hindu diasporic space, these papers demonstrate, engage broader issues of Hindu identity, the role of innovation in diasporic ritual performance, the nature of trans-generational networks both within and beyond ethnically bounded communities, and the agency of both human and divine actors. Perhaps most significantly, the session’s emphasis on digital diasporas, inter and intra-ethnic Hindu diasporas, and intersections of public and domestic Hindu space suggest a variety of new trajectories that the study of Hindu diasporas might fruitfully engage.

  • Abstract

     

    In recent years, the implied valences of terms like “diaspora,” “globalism,” and “transnationalism” have been innovatively collated and explored. While the omnipresence of academic discourse may indicate universal acceptance, new critique has swiftly followed.   In particular, the dyadic resonance of home and hostland has come into question. My presentation intervenes in this ongoing conversation by surveying Ganesha devotion at three temples in New York City: (1) The Sri Mahavallabha Ganapati Devasthanam in Flushing; (2) The Wat Phutthai Thavorn Wanaram in Elmhurst; and (3) The Broome Street Ganesh Temple in Lower Manhattan.  Following sociologist Tahseen Shams's language on placemaking in diasporic contexts, I argue that the styles of Hindu worship that one observes at these spaces are influenced by social networks stemming from ‘here,’ (their immediate context in Gotham), ‘there,’ (India, the supposed homeland of Ganesha) and ‘elsewhere’ (other non-Indian communities of Ganesha devotees sited in the USA, Malaysia, and Thailand).

  • Abstract

    The Parashakthi Goddess Temple in Pontiac, Michigan, was established in 1999 on Vijaya Daśamī, a day celebrating the Goddess’s victory over demonic forces. In 2018, a fire destroyed most of the temple. It was reconsecrated in an entirely different form in 2022. Some temple leaders and devotees described the fire as divinely ordained, asserting that the Goddess wanted the temple to be destroyed so that a more powerful one could be built to handle stronger demonic forces. Before the 2018 fire, I heard devotees describe the temple as an “energy vortex” or a—or, as one Indian visitor described it to me, a “lively” place “where śakti dances.”  How did the fire change perceptions of temple space? How does a diaspora temple become a “more powerful” vector of śakti?  What role did humans, the Goddess, and other “supersensual” beings allegedly play in the destruction and regeneration of temple space?

  • Abstract

    Festivals are important events for diasporic communities to live, stage and negotiate identity, heritage and culture – beyond borders. Durgāpūjā is a perfect example for this, as it has extensively traveled with Indian communities, beyond many geographical and cultural borders. Today, the festival is characterized by elaborate public celebrations and pronounced community aspects in many places worldwide that are home to Indian migrant communities. The festival was added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2021. This paper asks how Durgāpūjā visitors’ networking practices in the exemplary diasporic context of Finland look like, how social media are employed in this, and how this relates to trans-generational religious and cultural education. How do networking practices contribute to share, construct, interpret and (re-)define the visitors individual and community identities, which topics dominate their social media communication, which are main formats of sharing, and how and why is this used for trans-generational educational purposes?

  • Abstract

    This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork to examine the efforts made by Hindu families in the domestic sphere to foster and maintain generational relationships with Indian culture, language, tradition, and religiosity. Hindu forms of religiosity are not confined to the mandir space, but rather move with the individual and take place within the home more than at the mandir. This is consistent with typical Hindu practice in India, where a greater emphasis is placed on religious praxis in the home. I engage with the theories of space and place, and the diaspora to examine how these practices contribute to an understanding of the self as a Hindu living in the United States with a hyphenated identity. I argue that even with the possible engagement with public mandirs, the domestic sphere is an essential component of Hindu praxis in the diaspora.