In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

This paper explores the range of contemplative practices presented in the Mencius and argues that the cultivation of “flood-like qi” through practices like restorative sleep, self-examination, and empathetic extension constitutes the physiological substrate to psychological states of gnosis or noesis that provide revelatory insight into the nature of human goodness endowed by Heaven. Mencius suggests that by engaging in these contemplative practices, one can achieve states of mental calm or an “unperturbed heart” which can serve not only as an enabling condition for noetic insights or “reflection” in regard to the goodness of human nature but can also diminish or weaken other baser impulses like the desire for profit. The promotion of these contemplative exercises along with their attendant spiritual goals suggests that Mencius understood the Way as a holistic process that required both cognitive attunement to the design of Heaven as well as harmonization of one’s psycho-physiological energies.

This paper builds upon two previous studies – one by Daniel Gardner, and the other by Peng Guoxiang – in which Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian practice of meditative reading has been compared with the Christian practice of lectio divina. While acknowledging these studies’ contributions, the paper argues that a more theologically and historically nuanced consideration of lectio divina can yield even greater insights regarding Zhu’s approach to the Confucian Classics. In particular, the historical development of lectio divina from a primarily vocal practice in late antiquity to a more internalized, silent practice in later centuries prompts a closer examination of the dynamic relationship between vocal recitation and silent, interior reflection in Zhu’s practice. As a result, it is suggested that Zhu places a greater emphasis on the externality and objectivity of the Classics than previous studies have granted in their attempts to differentiate Zhu’s meditative reading from lectio divina.

This paper examines the significance of ‘gyeong/jing 敬’, or reverence, as an essential virtue within the Confucian tradition. In the rigidly hierarchical class system of the Joseon dynasty (1392 – 1897) and even in contemporary Korean neo-Confucian society, the understanding of reverence has frequently been compromised, legitimizing the authority of the upper class while marginalizing the voices and experiences of lower classes, women, children, and non-human entities. This study posits that reverence must be reciprocal to realize its true relational meanings and ethical values, suggesting that gyeong/jing 敬 should transcend gender, class, and race distinctions, fostering a broader ecological interdependence between humanity and the natural world.

Spiritual journaling has historically supported self-reflection and moral cultivation in Neo-Confucianism, yet traditional practices were often solitary. The Kongyang Confucian Fellowship, founded in 2002 by Zhu Xiangfei (孔阳), innovates this tradition by creating a digital, communal journaling practice. Members document experiences with Confucian exercises like quiet sitting (静坐) and walking meditation (步行冥想) and share their writings on a private forum, engaging in mutual reflection and structured feedback. This study examines how this practice functions as a contemporary tool for Confucian self-cultivation, using a meta-analysis of journals, surveys, and interviews. The research reveals how digital engagement transforms solitary reflection into an interactive, communal ritual, demonstrating Confucian spirituality's adaptability to modern challenges and contributing to broader discussions on the digital revival of traditional spiritual practices.

Towards a decolonization of the theory of Islamic art, this paper consults doctrines of the Persian Sufis Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) and Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209) as they bear upon a Sufi understanding of beauty. Their teachings on the Sufi doctrine of tajallī (manifestation), that is, that all things are manifestations of God, imply that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but is in the nature of things. Given that the Divine is Absolute (muṭlaq), as exemplified by the Divine Name the Truth / the Real (al-Ḥaqq), beauty can be described metaphysically as an objective reality that exists in the true nature of all manifest beings. Ultimately, this theory necessitates that a distinction be made between the subjective nature of attraction and the objective nature of beauty, as well as offers decolonial support through insight into traditional intellectual principles that inform Islamic aesthetics.

This paper discusses how the term khalifa or vicegerent has been approached in a reductive manner through its historical placement in political and environmental contexts, limiting the range of its discursive contributions. Placing Ibn Arabi’s (d. 1240) thought into conversation with Said Nursi’s (d.1960) Risale-i Nur, this paper examines the connection between servantship ('ubudiyyah) and being a vicegerent (khalifa) of God. It argues that being a khalifa is about forming proper God-centric relations with entities in the world. Rather than denoting any sense of intrinsic human superiority, the notion of epistemic vicegerency offers a way to conceptualize how creation can be hermeneutically approached such that it is “read” and appreciated in terms of its epistemic value. 

Understanding khalifa through this epistemic lens can help us rethink not only the spiritual orientation of human beings with the rest of creation but also the nature of their ethical engagement with the world. 

This paper explores how Sufi shrines in Kashmir act as sanctuaries of solace and spaces for ethical transformation, particularly for women navigating political turmoil. Focusing on the khanqāh of Shaykh Ḥamzah Makhdūm (1494–1576), a pivotal figure in the Suhrawardīyya tradition, it examines how embodied rituals—such as dhikr (remembrance), supplications, and votive offerings—serve as spiritual refuge and foster an inner (bāṭinī) sense of justice where outer (ẓāhirī) justice remains inaccessible. Drawing on Talal Asad’s (1986) concept of “discursive tradition” and Saba Mahmood’s (2004) insights into embodied piety, the paper argues that embodied devotion is not just ritual: it actively shapes women’s moral agency, fosters communal solidarity, and redefines justice. By focusing on women’s experiences, this study underscores how shrines provide spaces of spiritual autonomy, belonging, and resilience, where care, dignity, and resistance are central to ethical self-making.

There is growing academic interest in what David Abram calls the “more-than-human” world, that is, cosmology that decenters human perspectives. This paper considers the portrayed sentience of more-than-human beings in Islamic cosmologies. Through a theoretical lens of ecopoiesis — the creative processes through which ecological relationships, narratives, and spaces are formed, both in nature and in literature—I analyze portrayed human-nonhuman interactions recorded in a sixteenth-century Kashmiri Persian hagiography, Dawud Khaki’s Rishinama (The Lives of the Rishi Saints). This Kashmiri Persian hagiographical collection of Sufi saints of the Kashmir Valley contains stories of Sufis who retreat into nature for private meditation (khalwa) and, similarly undergoing spiritual purification, engage in conversations with nonhuman beings such as spirits of waterfalls,forest spirits, and rivers. The figure of the wandering Rishi Sufi in nature becomes a spiritual, ecological archetype in Kashmiri Sufi traditions.

In 1967, Black Baptist minister Rev. Henry Mitchell told Dr. King to “get the hell out” of Chicago because he “created hate.” Mitchell had no interest in marches or King’s demands to the federal government. This paper argues that as a fundamentalist minister and John Birch Society speaker, Mitchell described freedom as “individual responsibility” and “less government,” over and against Dr. Martin Luther King’s calls for federal intervention. Mitchell's vision of freedom reveals how he filtered Bircher conspiracy of communist infiltration of the federal government through a fundamentalist approach to the Bible that informed his politics of self-sufficiency, economic uplift, anti-communism, and nuclear family values. This paper shows how Mitchell sat at an unexplored intersection of Black fundamentalism and reactionary conservatism which offers new understandings of the American Conservative movement and its relationship with Black communities.

African American Islam deserves serious study as a unique reformist movement in Islam and as a vital development in African American religion. Temple #11’s founders were primarily musicians attracted to the Nation of Islam's mysticism, ethnic pride, and self-help programs for individual and community growth.  The 1948 to 1998 growth of Boston’s Temple #11 illustrates Elijah Muhammad's religious, cultural, and economic impact on an African-American urban community. Temple #11  catalyzed a cultural transformation in which Boston’s Negro neighborhoods became an assertive African-American community. Symbolic of this process, a  2020 plebiscite renamed Roxbury’s Dudley Square  Nubian Square, immortalizing the Dudley Square Nubian Notion business of Temple #11 pioneer Malik Abdal-Khallaq. This paper traces Temple #11's significance in Boston's Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Temple #11’s influence on the Black Theology movement, which revitalized African American Christianity, and its role in fostering the growth of Boston's Ahmadi and Orthodox Muslim communities.

Majorette dance at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) exists at the intersection of Black and religious aesthetics. Despite its prominence, it remains understudied and often reduced to spectacle. This paper uncovers its deeper structuring logics. Examining majorette dance within the Fifth Quarter, a post-game ritual where Black college bands engage in competitive play, I ask: How does majorette dance function as both a moving aesthetic and a movement aesthetic?

Emerging in 1968 amid the Black Arts Movement and second-wave feminism, majorette dance carries an embodied grammar that disrupts dominant aesthetic hierarchies. It demands social and spatial reconfiguration, queers the logics of the college football game, and shifts performance and gaze from the field to the stands. Building on Black feminist dance theories and Ashon Crawley’s study of Blackpentecostal aesthetics, I frame majorette stand routines as kinetic writing—an embodied archive and sacred performance practice that challenges dominant aesthetic frameworks.

While scholars have recognized the ubiquity of erotic and homoerotic themes in classical Islamic literatures, they have neglected an important historical question: How did specific communities of early modern Muslims engage with classical texts featuring erotic themes? My paper addresses this question by analyzing early modern Indian commentaries on the Gulistan (Rose-Garden). I argue that the production, circulation, and materiality of these manuscript commentaries reveals the influence of the Gulistan in the everyday cultivation of Islamic ethics, beyond the royal courts that are the loci of existing studies. Commentators approached the Gulistan through a paradigm I call the “ethics of erotics.” Experiencing and discussing different forms of desire, including same-sex desire, was part of this framework, but acting upon them was not. In this gap between desire, language, and action lay the possibility of ethical cultivation.

This paper presents a novel analysis of khunthās (intersex individuals) as a third ontological category in certain classical Māliki and Shiʿi legal discourses. While intersex individuals are sometimes seen as a third legal or social category in Muslim contexts, no studies have demonstrated that they were recognised as such ontologically. Adopting historical, textual, and legal-hermeneutical approaches, I examine several classical Māliki and Shiʿi legal texts spanning the 11th to the 16th centuries. I argue that some of these jurists challenged the binary interpretation of sex, advocating for an alternative exegesis that accommodates khunthā as an ontological third category. To highlight the implications of this approach, I contrast the non-binary perspective with binary interpretations in legal cases of marriage, clothing, inheritance, and prayer. This analysis reveals the differing legal rights assigned to khunthās, offering a historical foundation for contemporary Muslim intersex individuals to advocate for their civil rights within their societies.

This paper examines classical Shāfi‘ī opinions regarding the khunthā as represented in Abū Ibrāhīm Ismā‘īl bin Yaḥyā al-Muzanī’s Mukhtaṣar of al-Shāfi‘ī’s al-Umm (Dar al-Sha‘b, 1968, 6 vols.) and contextualizes them within a history of legal discussions of non-binary bodies. While al-Shāfi‘ī (d. 820) and al-Muzanī (d. 877) prepared legal arguments that recognized a legal category that straddled the gender binary between male and female, they did not employ this legal category to recognize an ontological being other than male or female. They recognized the khunthā as a person whose genital variations made them difficult to categorize legally as male or female but employed the juristic concept of certainty to evade the difference between the social reality of non-binary bodies and Qur'an texts that spoke only of male and female created beings.

Current trends in feminist Muslim scholarship highlight radical uncertainty, contingency, and ambiguity as fruitful ground for theological reflection and Islamic ethics. But what do uncertainty, contingency, and ambiguity look like in practice? How is uncertainty lived and felt, and how might it be a foundation for Muslim piety? Playful Piety: How American Muslims Play with/in Islam explores how contemporary American Muslims cultivate pious subjectivities through various forms of playfulness, and how tradition and authority are negotiated in these processes. I suggest that playing could be the praxis for a feminist theology of uncertainty. My present case study explores how a queer Muslim devotional circle “plays with tradition.” Through analysis of my ethnographic data I argue that playing is a legitimate form of Muslim piety and offers novel epistemological and theological approaches to tradition, especially for marginalized Muslims.