In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

The Tamil Śiva-bhakti poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār is understood by that tradition to be the first devotional saint, and scholars date her to the sixth century. My argument is that she inhabited devotion as an exploration of the freedom to question inherited identity in order to create a resonant spiritual identity. She created a devotional subjectivity that dislodged key social identification markers such as gender, caste and class by only identifying herself in two self-determined ways in her poetry: As a servant and as a pēy (ghoul). At the heart of both is a transformative affective relationship to the god Śiva instead of social identity. The concept of a devotional subjectivity allows us to explore the play among self, persona, and transformation as an expressive freedom of self-fashioning. This puts the focus on the logics of female exemplars’ devotional writings instead of on the domesticating impact of biographical writings about them. 

Akka Mahadevi, a women saint and a major figure among the cadre of vachana-composers of the twelfth-century, has received much attention for her bold lyrical poems, which express intense devotion to and personal love for Shiva. This paper seeks to complicate the popularly-held representation of Mahadevi as a woman in love with the god by paying attention to poems that remain outside the general public’s focus and scholarly considerations. These “neglected” poems feature textual and literary elements that are not usually associated with Mahadevi. They include quotations of Sanskrit scripture and exhibit a catechistic worldview; their authorial voice is concerned with prescribed religious life. In the presentation, I shall contrast between the multiple subjectivities in Mahadevi’s poetry, suggest ways of understanding these contrasts by considering the historical contexts in which they were generated, and ask how we could accommodate multiple subjectivities of a “branded” woman saint.

Poetry attributed to Lal Ded first appears in the historical record in the late seventeenth century, over 300 years after she died, and thus was unlikely written by her but by later Kashmiri Hindu men. Even the earliest writings to mention Lal Ded, which are hagiographical, were written by Sufi men in the late 1500s. Through a close analysis of these early sources, this paper argues the Kashmiri woman saint Lal Ded was utilized in these earliest sources to shape and define a new ascetic masculinity—free from, but not unrelated to, other competing paradigms of masculinity in early modern Kashmir. New frameworks for understanding women saints may be produced through examining such historical reconfigurations of gendered protocols and expected behaviors, providing insights into the self-fashioning of past religious communities for both men and women.

The power of exemplary women from the past in the devotional (bhakti) traditions of Hinduism operates in participatory communal practices of story and song that attend them, their identities and voices relational and labile even as those of practitioners are, particularly in the case of the immensely popular sixteenth-century Krishna devotee Mirabai. This paper will argue that people’s continuing engagement with her story and songs reveal significant ways that such women open up alternative possibilities beyond normative gendering and facilitate the development of more expansive selves for both men and women devotees (bhaktas).  Through practices of singing and importantly also composing songs in her name as well as stories about her, people find their own voices, forge community, and craft alternate selves beyond socially prescribed identities and valuations. Such an approach offers an important avenue for comparative study when the lives and words of such women themselves are irretrievable.

It is clear reading the poetry of 18th c. devotional poet Vengamamba that she imagined herself as a kind of ascetic. Not only do her compositions reflect a depth of philosophical and yogic training, but she identifies herself as a poet and scholar, a friend of Vishnu. Most Telugu audiences, however, do not know Vengamamba through her textual compositions. They know her through oral life histories and hagiographical texts and films, which present her as a woman who refused marriage and traditional gender roles on the grounds that she was already married to Vishnu. This paper will examine this gap in the nature of the (male hagiographers’) fashioning and self-fashioning of Vengamamba. By contextualizing hagiographical narratives within the historical and cultural moment of the 19th c. this paper argues that the hagiographers and Vengamamba operate on very differing definitions of female asceticism and imagine very contrasting visions of Telugu womanhood. 

The theology of the late Jürgen Moltmann is often thematized according to the motif of hope. Ryan Neal and GM Saaiman are representative of this sort of commentary, and it has proven fruitful across diverse applications of Moltmann’s work. This study argues, however, that Moltmann should also be considered a “theologian of freedom.” For hope, like faith, requires an object: hope for what? And when this question is pressed, across all of Moltmann’s major works, the result is the same: hope for freedom, for liberation, and for justice. Moltmann says that God is the author of hope through the divine promises. But far less recognized and understood is that Moltmann also considers God the author of freedom, and that God instantiates such freedom via divine kenosis. This study thus presents an original and holistic reading of Moltmann as a relational-kenotic theologian and of his deeply formative grammar of freedom.

In this paper, we intend to show how Jürgen Moltmann’s rejection of classical divine impassibility can be developed by Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can move Moltmann’s soteriological theodicy and social Trinitarianism further into an eternal, inter-Trinitarian kenosis which provides grounding for a transformative relational anthropology—all the while not simply subsuming God into creation.

By building Balthasar’s kenosis atop Moltmann regarding God’s relation to creation, incarnation, and death, we can perceive not only a God who is in solidarity with human suffering and bringing hope, but in whose Trinitarian life itself can be found all the contingency, suffering, and change of creation, not as stranger but as archetype. This can better resolve impassibility and establish human beings as essentially similar relational entanglements—in all our sufferings and joys. Then, we might know how vulnerability, risk, and trust makes for, and truly feels, a free and flourishing human life.

 

The death of Jurgen Moltmann last year was a profound loss, not only to theologians and religious scholars, but also to the ecclesiastical community. Despite not writing extensively about disability or constructing a systematic theology of disability, he was a pioneering voice from systematic theology who engaged with the topic of disability. It is important to note that Moltmann often discussed disability from a personal perspective, as his older brother, Hartwig, lived with severe disability and became one of the victims of euthanasia in the Nazi regime. In my presentation, I will share my findings on Moltmann's views on disability in his writings, lectures, and interviews. I will also share my findings on Moltmann’s theological influence on the writings of disability theologians, namely, Nancy Eeisland, Amos Yong, Deborah Creamer, Thomas Reynolds, and John Swinton. I will try to find Moltmann's spirits of liberation in the writings of these disability theologians.

Following his 2024 death, Jürgen Moltmann leaves behind the theological idea of friendship, which as the potential to advance freedom amidst today’s sufferings and oppressions. He asserts that Christ’s friendship on the cross is the example for human friendship. Once touched by Jesus’s friendship, one replaces patterns of oppression with the kind of friendship which advances the care and liberation of the other. This paper will argue for Moltmann’s belief that Jesus’s example of friendship spurs the kind of human friendship which creates freedom. First, Jesus’s friendship with us will be examined. Second, the affection inherent in friendship for those who are both the same and different is argued. Third, this work argues that friendship launches one into public solidarity and advocacy for his friend. Human friendship, in the example of Jesus, has the potential to promote a freer society.

This paper argues that Jürgen Moltmann’s concept of “open friendship” represents an overlooked overture to feminist theology today. As a “law of grace,” it invokes “the righteousness of the kingdom of God” through mutuality, equity, and justice in human relations. In particular, Jesus’ “open friendship” inspires a spirituality of resilience and eschatological hope to counter the sexism and misogyny in our cultural imaginary today. To mount this argument, I consider three encounters between Jesus and women in John’s Gospel: the Samaritan woman at the well, the women at the cross, and Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ. I contend that these encounters carve a feminist via salutis of forgiveness and conversion, of gathering in sorrow and solidarity, and of rising up to proclaim the Good News of Christ’s life-giving Spirit. In sum, I commend “open friendship” as Moltmann’s invitation to pursue a radically transformative feminist theology of grace. 

Overlooking Lake Tahoe stands Cave Rock, a geological formation on the eastern side of the lake which straddles the California-Nevada border. Historically and spiritually significant to the Washoe Tribe, Cave Rock is considered a sacred site where tribal leadership discourages tourism to honor the elders who steward the land. Yet, beginning in the late 20th century onward, the site became a popular destination for recreation – once described by recreational climbers as offering “some of the most gymnastic routes in the state.” This paper, co-authored with a leader of the Washoe Tribe, examines the contrasting conceptions of care held by the Tribe and the recreational users of Cave Rock. Drawing on archived surveys, newspaper articles, and interviews, we trace the tensions between Indigenous land stewardship and public land use, culminating in a legal case that illuminates broader themes of care, access, and the enclosure of the commons.

My paper focuses on claims about mineral rights and responsibilities in Anishinaabe and settler narratives of gold mining around the Great Lakes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Treaties were negotiated on both sides of the colonially imposed border, mineral rights were always under discussion. Gold-seekers, including geologists, surveyors, and even missionaries, sought mineral rights sanctioned by cosmologies of land that valued gold on the terms of capitalist profit and by way of providential claims rooted in Christian theologies. They were challenged by Anishinaabe leaders such as Mawedopenais, quoted in my title, who played a key role in the 1870s negotiations for Treaty #3 in what is now called northwestern Ontario. Examining Anishinaabe-settler exchanges reveals anew how Anishinaabeg claimed spiritual jurisdiction given to them by the Creator when challenging settler-colonial claims to mineral rights and the right to extraction.

On July 5th, 2024, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that several species of giant clams in Guåhan (Guam)–-known among the Indigenous CHamoru people as “hima”–-will be designated as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This threatens CHamoru cultural and religious practitioners who harvest and carve hima as a religious practice. This paper situates the 2024 NOAA conservation policies within the tumultuous  history of U.S. conservation policy in Guåhan, while eliding how U.S. imperialism and military occupation are the source of environmental catastrophe in Guåhan. This paper will conclude by offering an Indigenous model of conservation rooted in “In-Place” preservation practices and contemporary LANDBACK! politics in Guåhan.

Employing the interdisciplinary lenses of Black religious studies, food studies, and Black Feminist theory, this paper examines the everyday lived experiences of Black Mormon women (BMW). It uncovers how Black Mormon women navigate intersectional social exclusions like antiBlackness, misogynoir, and classism within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and how food practices influence and shape their faith and identities. I draw upon two examples for my argument: Jane Manning James, a Black domestic servant for Mormon church founder Joseph Smith, and Nara Smith, a popular #tradwife social media influencer. From the historical to the contemporary, food is a central measure and tool of these Black Mormon Women's domesticity, racialized gendering, attempts at kinship, and spirituality. It is a contested space of material culture where Black Mormon Women struggle, negotiate, and strive for life, otherwise. 

Normatively, the analytic of care has been theorized within a positive orientation situating care practices as a liberatory salve against anti-black violence. Care as such fails to account for how violence is ordained and materializes vis-a-vis care for the black. "Too black for care" writes Frank Wilderson is the structural position of the blackened. This proposal examines the religious and scientific violence that undergirds the ways in which the enslaved person is cared for and enacts their own care work in the slave hospital on the Butler plantation estates of Butler and St. Simon Islands in Georgia from 1774-1859. How do we think of care and what it means for the enslaved person to be cared for in this site? I contend that the exemplary violence and libidinal economy of slavery is continued and congealed within the religio-scientific analytic of care which continues to determine the blackened existence today.

This paper offers visual analysis of Carie Mae Weems’s now iconic “Kitchen Table” (1990) exhibit and situates the exhibit within a history of 20th-century black photographers who contested visual regimes of white supremacy by training their lens on everyday spaces, habits, and objects. In Weems’s original series of twenty gelatin prints, the kitchen table is a constant but not uncontested focal point. It bears witness to joy and grief, desire and revulsion, laughter and bitterness and ecstasy and agony. For Weems, the table in her home in Syracuse, New York, is a material object and a narrative conceit and a photographic creation. Through all of these registers, she curates the frame with bodies and objects and plays of light to tell a story even as she provokes a disconnect between what beholders see and what she wants them to know. 

This paper investigates the critical resources contained in Black historical romance writer Beverly Jenkins’s self-identification as a “kitchen table historian” and her self-proclaimed work of “edutainment” (Turn On podcast). Jenkins’s naming continues and innovates in a legacy of Black women’s subversive cultural production at the meeting of historiography, literature, and religious meaning-making, ranging from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to Audre Lorde, Carrie Mae Weems, and Karen Baker-Fletcher, and imaged through the kitchen table. I argue that the “kitchen table historian” enacts a spatial reformation of historiography in contemporary mass-market historical romance which eschatologically utilizes desire to center a Black historical subject. Analyzing Jenkins’s commentary against comments from white historical romance writer Julia Quinn (author of the famed, originally white Bridgerton series), I showcase how Jenkins’s kitchen table intervention upends the white supremacist presumptions of white-centric historical romance and rehabilitates Black historical consciousness through the erotic, a powerful religious resource. 

In Confessions 9.10.23-25, Augustine and Monica experience God at Ostia. This experience represents a significant departure from Platonic conceptions of divine visions in two ways. First, Augustine and Monica's experience is shared. Second, both Augustine and Monica are epistemic peers. These points stand in marked contrast to how Plato and other Neoplatonists, particularly Plotinus, conceive visions of the Good. For the Platonist, such experiences are fundamentally individual cognitive achievements. They cannot be shared. Furthermore, they can only be achieved within the context of a master-pupil relationship, i.e., an epistemically asymmetrical relationship. We argue these differences in the Augustinian and Platonist accounts stem from how each conceptualizes the nature of the Good. For the Platonists, the Good is a passive object of contemplation. For Augustine, God is an active cause of divine experiences. We argue that this difference has significant implications throughout Augustine’s early epistemology and theory of divine experiences.

One of the main shifts that is detectable in Augustine’s thinking involves a network of ideas connecting the nature and origin of evil, the nature of the human person, and the ultimate hope for humanity. These areas are tied together for Augustine and are particularly prominent in the writings pertaining to Manichaeanism. It has become clear in recent years that in relation to these areas of Augustine’s thought, it is important to consider the influence of Neo-Platonists like Plotinus and especially Porphyry. As I will explain, the analysis of certain critiques Augustine makes against the Manichaeans will enable us to gain a clearer sense of Porphyry’s influence on Augustine, as well as a better understanding of the ultimate position Augustine took on the several important metaphysical and soteriological issues.

In this paper, I recover platonic and Christian sources on divine immensity and argue that immensity is crucial to any resolutely theistic participatory metaphysics. The paper involves three movements. First, I outline a version of immensity drawn from key sources of classical theism, including Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Frances Turretin. On this view, immensity describes, not merely the limitless presence of effective divine power, but properly the reality of divine presence as the essence that surrounds and undergirds the essences of all actual and possible creatures. Second, I argue that such a view of immensity guards against the deistic impulse, on the one hand, and the pantheistic/panentheistic impulse on the other hand - and yet allows for a sufficiently robust account of divine presence for a participatory metaphysics. Finally, I conclude by addressing philosophical objections to divine presence as outlined in the doctrine of immensity.

In this paper, I map the summit of Augustine of Hippo’s schema of human perceptual experience as laid out in his De Quantitate Animae (Lt. On the Magnitude of the Soul). As I analyse, Augustine uses Neoplatonist participatory metaphysics in his construction of the seventh gradus of the (human) soul. The gradus are degrees of functionalities the soul possesses. I go on to trace Augustine’s schema of the summit of human perceptual experience as the mansio (seventh gradus) to Thomas Aquinas’ schema as the habitatio. I argue that Aquinas’ schema of the summit of perceptual experience is also shaped by metaphysics of participation via his use of Augustinian theology. Whilst Augustine’s mansio takes us beyond this life into eternity, Aquinas’ habitatio is the summit of joy during one’s earthly life. Both Augustine’s ‘mansio’ and Aquinas’ 'habitatio' connote the concept ‘home.’ A concept which, I argue, is from Neoplatonist participatory metaphysics.

While Gagaku or Japanese court music has been integral to both imperial and local Shinto ceremonies, including various matsuri (festivals), its ritual function remains underexplored in religious and ritual studies. This paper explores the role of “folk Gagaku” in Shinto rituals, emphasizing its significance in the comparative study of religious rituals. Examining small-scale, amateur Gagaku groups in Shiga prefecture, my presentation highlights how localized ritual practices interact with institutional traditions. Presenting ethnographic data and field recordings, I contrast these performances with the imperial Gagaku tradition, revealing tensions between orthodox ritual frameworks and vernacular expressions of sacred sound. The paper advocates for a “sonic turn” in religious studies, employing acoustemology (Feld 2015) to explore Shinto sound culture (Ōuchi 2021). Challenging text-centric approaches, I call for a more integrated understanding of ritual soundscapes, demonstrating the centrality of auditory experience to the study of lived religion. 

This presentation examines the religious practices of Shinto shrine families within shrine kōsha and kyōkai under State Shinto during the Meiji and Taishō periods, focusing on the Miyagishima family of Miho Shrine in Shizuoka. In 1882, the government prohibited Shinto priests from performing religious guidance, leading to a division between Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto. However, Miho Shrine engaged in religious activities through the Shinto Miho Church, affiliated with the Shinto Headquarters. Inspired by Honda Chikaatsu's Spiritual Learning (Reigaku), they practiced divine possession (kishinhō). The Miyagishima archives (1893–1925) contain oracular records, doctrinal texts, and one of the Ritual texts, "Shinkai Gakusoku", a 1915 ritual manual written under divine possession. This text details childbirth prayers and deity summoning rituals, reflecting Honda’s teachings. By analyzing "Shinkai Gakusoku", it becomes clear that shrine families exercised religious autonomy under kyōkai-affiliated kōsha, preserving spiritual traditions beyond the official framework of State Shinto.

Purification (harae) is a fundamental concept in Japanese religious tradition, particularly evident in the Ōharae, a Shinto ritual performed biannually to cleanse spiritual pollution and restore harmony. While the Nakatomi no harae, the ritual formula, has been extensively studied, the role of the natural landscape in the ritual remains overlooked. This study explores how natural elements—rivers, mountains, trees, air, and the ocean—function as ritual tools, enabling the kami’s purifying intervention. Drawing from ritual materiality and landscape studies, I argue that in the Ōharae, the natural landscape is not merely a backdrop but an ontological potency that actively constructs the sacred space to the point of merging with it. This sacred landscape encompasses a large geographical area which includes also the territories outside of Japan therefore reaffirming the qualitative difference between “center” and “remote”.