In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

This paper argues that a trajectory in Foucault’s work may help us theorize an approach to spirituality with relevance for animal studies and the Bible. Although the significance of “spirituality” for ecological thought and practice has been noted in multiple contexts, from Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist “critical spirituality” to reassessments of indigenous spiritualities, biblical scholars interested in animals rarely invoke discourses on spirituality. In his work on practices of the self however, Foucault, influenced by Pierre Hadot’s studies of ancient philosophy as “spiritualexercises,” develops a “new concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis,” which is also a “political spirituality” (Karen Vintges). While scholars use this framework to rethink bodily practices from veganism to queer sexual activities, the role of reading in Foucault's spiritual exercises allows us to theorize the interpretation of the Bible’s animals as a kind of spiritual exercise, which transforms the reader into an ecological subject.

This paper builds on my earlier article 'Cutting up Life', where I argued that Judeo-Christian blood sacrifice is a technology for stabilising the fluid distinctions between human, animal and divine andthen breaking these boundaries down. In a usage that began in the Journal of Physiology in 1903,and still survives in laboratories (though often abbreviated to ‘sack’ or other euphemisms) the term ‘sacrifice’ took on the additional meaning of ‘to kill an experimental animal for scientific purposes’. Inthis paper I compare sacrifice in the laboratory and on the altar focussing on three key ambiguities:1) literalism and euphemism; 2) guilt and justification; 3) secrecy and visibility; 4) transitive andintransitive sacrifice (separation from and identification with the sacrificed animal as data, equipmentand object and surrogate human, martyr, ‘pet’).

This paper revisits the book of Numbers 22:22-33 through the lens of Lori Gruen’s entangled empathy. Previous studies on the Balaam narrative have typically focused on symbolic, narrative, or theological interpretations, often overlooking its ethical implications regarding human-animal relationships. Gruen’s theory of entangled empathy, which integrates both attentive care for animals and cognitive awareness of relevant moral responsibility, provides a fresh lens to explore the animal ethics in the story of Balaam and his donkey. Through textual analysis, this paper demonstrates how the interactions between Balaam, his donkey, and the angel demonstrate the process of entangled empathy. Additionally, the study highlights how the ethical framework of entangled empathy resonates with other instances of animal concern throughout the Bible.

The paper I am proposing explores the contributions and interdisciplinary insights of new materialism as a philosophical movement, and how its focus on matter at inherently vibrant could shape method and/or approaches to biblical texts that deal with non-human characters. It also builds on the work of Brittany E. Wilson whose work on God’s body and new materialism has attempted to investigate the role of God’s material interaction with the nonhuman world. I use Numbers 22:21-35 as a test case for my research and observe how the three bodies presented in the encounter of Balaam, his she-ass, and God’s messenger might be read with particular attention to new materialist insights. This paper represents my attempt to outline how a new materialist reading of a biblical text might take shape, and form a new hermeneutic approach to biblical texts.

I propose to present on the intersection of animal symbolism, sexual desire, and religious identity in the Epistle of Barnabas, a second-century text included in some early Christian scriptural collections. The Epistle portrays animals ambivalently, representative of both divine glory and earthly fallenness. Utilizing the work of theorist Mel Chen, and in conversation with other theorists in animal studies and the environmental humanities, I will argue that the Epistle constructs an “animacy hierarchy” where animal, human, and divine identity are mapped according to relative alignment with the text’s configurations of sexual morality and scriptural interpretation.

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This paper offers a study of the Scripture, Interpretation, and Practice (SIP) graduate program at the University of Virginia, conceptualizing it as a mode of intellectual formation—one that produces distinct scholarly orientations and patterns of inquiry within the broader field of Religious Studies. Rather than relying on the program’s official descriptions or curricular structures, I begin by reflecting on my own formation within SIP, analyzing how what I take to be characteristically SIP forms of inquiry appear in my dissertation. I then extend this reflection
outward by examining how similar patterns appear in the work of other SIP graduates. The goal is to articulate a model of SIP as an intellectual formation, not as a singular or unified mode of inquiry, but potentially as a set of overlapping orientations with family resemblances. Determining how to characterize SIP’s distinctiveness across multiple projects is part of the paper’s analytic task.

LitRPG apocalypses is a burgeoning genre that allows for the investigation of people’s responses to systemic oppression. In most cases, LitRPG apocalypses feature protagonists who labor for the liberation of themselves, their communities, and even their planets, whether through establishing themselves as powerful enough to protect their freedoms or by dismantling the oppressive systems thus forcing a renewal or rebirth into something better than before. Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series—and particularly the latest installment This Inevitable Ruin—exemplifies the genre, analyzing oppression and liberation with the misadventures of a guy named Carl and his talking cat Donut. This paper highlights that analysis and uses the works of Mircea Eliade, Pablo Freire, and others to connect Dinniman’s work to the greater conversation regarding liberation. 

Drawing from the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, Kalki 2898 AD (2024), reimagines elements of the grand narrative in a futuristic wasteland while setting out to explore questions of belief and faith, of the messiah and the messianic, of authority and godhood, of climate driven apocalypse and eschatology, of sin, guilt and redemption. What is more interesting,is how the movie,a significant pop-cultural product,serves as a material manifestation of specific religion while excluding specific ones, helping in formation of modified categories of the religion and ultimately aiding in its contemporary circulation.This paper will attempt to unravel the entanglement between religion and science fiction in Kalki 2898, by drawing from the framework of the possible avenues of interaction (Thrall 2024) and the methodology of religious materiality (Chidester 2018). While Thrall provides a succinct guideline to interpret the interactions, Chidester arguments about materiality help locate the findings in real world religious manifestation. 

This paper argues that the Vimalakirti Sutra, a 1st-3rd-century Mahayana Buddhist text, can be read as an early example of speculative fiction. Through world-building and narrative devices, it challenges assumptions about embodiment, perception, and reality, and its portrayal of multiple realms pushes against the idea that religious texts must rely on “truth claims” to be meaningful. The sutra also destabilizes normative embodiment through events like a goddess transforming the arhat Shariputra into a woman, challenging gender norms within and beyond Buddhist doctrine. Additionally, it emphasizes sensory perception—particularly smell—offering a model of embodied understanding that resists purely linguistic explanation. These strategies invite students to engage with religion as world-making rather than just doctrine, illustrating how speculative fiction can expand our thinking about embodiment, truth, and religious experience. By reframing the Vimalakirti Sutra as speculative fiction, we can explore religion as a dynamic, imaginative force that resists fixed categories.

This paper describes an experiment to generate stub articles about women religious leaders using a purpose-built artificial intelligence system as a means to address gender imbalances on Wikipedia. The Women in Religion User Group is an officially recognized Wikimedia Movement Affiliate that “seeks to create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives of cis and transgender women scholars, activists, and practitioners in the world's religious, spiritual, and wisdom traditions.” (Women in Religion 2025) In the early stages of the project, we explored the use of retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to improve the veracity of the stubs that the LLM generated. In the current phase of the project, we are fine-tuning an open-source large language model to improve its ability to create Wikipedia stubs. After reviewing these techniques, we discuss their effectiveness while also raising ethical questions about releasing our project in open source.

In the summer of 2024, AI development appeared to stagnate with delays in major model releases and concerns about training data limitations. However, the emergence of Deepseek's reasoning model, deepseek-r1, revolutionized AI research by introducing a new "Reasoning Space" component. Unlike traditional transformer LLMs, which operate as black boxes producing token-by-token responses, reasoning models provide transparency into their decision-making process through accessible "reasoning traces."

This advancement enables researchers to examine how AI systems arrive at their conclusions. Building on this technology, this project aims to create AI instances replicating different Gospel versions of Jesus (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Thomas) using reasoning models. The goal is to analyze how these AI representations think differently and whether their reasoning can evolve through interaction with each other. This research could potentially extend to dialogues with other AI-simulated historical or philosophical figures, offering new insights into AI reasoning and simulation capabilities.

This study examines the role of human agency in AI-assisted translation, focusing on how the selection of reference databases influences the translation of Classical Chinese Buddhist texts. Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with the Deepseek R1 model, the research evaluates how consciously selected knowledge sources impact translation accuracy and doctrinal interpretation. The study applies this methodology to the Pumenpin chapter of the Fahuajing, analyzing multiple translation iterations with varying reference materials. Evaluation is conducted against authoritative translations to assess accuracy, doctrinal nuance, and interpretive biases. The study demonstrates that AI does not replace human expertise but instead requires active engagement in selecting reference sources, which fundamentally shape translation outcomes. This research establishes a methodological framework for AI-assisted religious text translation, emphasizing the necessity of human oversight to maintain theological coherence while leveraging computational advancements. It highlights the evolving role of translators in curating AI inputs rather than merely post-editing outputs.

This session explores the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), womanist visual culture, and the theo-moral imagination, as conceptualized by AnneMarie Mingo. By examining how AI can analyze and generate visual narratives that reflect womanist visual culture, this research aims to illuminate new dimensions of agency and moral responsibility in religious contexts. Through a critical lens, we will discuss how AI-driven visual narratives can both enhance and complicate notions of freedom, particularly in terms of representing marginalized voices. By integrating AI experiments with womanist theology, this session will highlight the potential of AI to amplify the theo-moral imagination that guides social activism and justice movements, while emphasizing the need for culturally sensitive AI practices that respect diverse religious narratives.

This title and abstract incorporate Mingo's concept of theo-moral imagination, emphasizing its role in guiding the ethical use of AI in womanist visual culture to promote freedom and agency.

This paper examines the iconography of a miniature inspired by Gregory of Nazianzen’s Third Discourse on Peace, which forms part of a Byzantine manuscript of the twelfth century (Basel, University Library, Ms. AN I 8). The most striking feature of the painting is an unusual depiction of a personification of Peace, the iconography of which is without parallels in Byzantine art. I argue that the details of this visual allegory reveal a connection of the Basel codex with the imperial court of Manuel I Komnenos, ruler of the Byzantine Empire between 1143 and 1180. I maintain that the painter aimed to portray the emperor as a great peacemaker who was striving to reunite the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches at a time of intense doctrinal debate.

This study explores the intersections between Kabbalistic and Sufi mystical thought, focusing on the role of letter mysticism in both traditions. Building on Ronald Kiener’s suggestion of Ibn al-Arabi’s potential engagement with Andalusian Kabbalists, this research examines how language functions as a cosmological principle in The Meccan Revelations, the Sefer Yetzirah, and the Zohar. Both Kabbalah and Sufism view letters as vessels of divine emanation, structuring reality and reflecting the human microcosm. Ibn al-Arabi’s concept of the Perfect Man parallels the Zohar’s Adam Kadmon, suggesting shared frameworks of their mystical systems. By contextualizing these ideas within the intellectual and religious exchanges of al-Andalus, this study sheds light on the possible transmission of mystical concepts across Jewish and Islamic traditions, emphasizing both commonalities and distinct theological developments.

The print shop headed by Jewish-Italian humanist Gershom (Hieronymus) Soncino (1460[?]-1534) produced a dazzling array of materials: Rabbinics, Talmud tractates, Latin and vernacular Italian poetry, illustrated chivalric epics. This wealth of sometimes contradictory material has led several Jewish bibliographers to question whether Gershom and Hieronymus were even the same person, inventing ‘histories’ of conversion. The ‘defense’ of his devout Jewishness is no less overdetermined (telling us more about 19th-centiry German-Jewish anxieties). Their source was in the material aspects of some of Soncino’s titles: decorative borders, acting as a kind of architecture, which he repurposed between ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Jewish’ titles. I present these decorative borders and my findings on the Venetian artisan whom Gershom commissioned for their creation, and expand on his supposedly ‘promiscuous’ use of the same material apparatus for both specifically ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Jewish’ titles. This use, I argue, is what led later bibliographers to ‘marranify’ his work.

Existing for only six years, the Combahee River Collective has had a long-term impact on Black feminist organizing, teaching, and writing through the 1977 publication of its Combahee River Collective Statement. This paper explores how the Combahee River Collective Statement’s themes—genesis, values, burdens, and focus—offers a vital framework for transformative pedagogy by womanist theologians and religious scholars. Key principles include embracing an outsider identity, decolonizing assessment, addressing emotional labor, and centering Black feminist perspectives. By reflecting on a crisis in a racial reconciliation course, this presentation illustrates how womanist pedagogy fosters liberatory learning spaces, breaking free from double consciousness to cultivate classrooms committed to survival, wholeness, and courageous exploration.

The Combahee River Collective Statement was the first articulation of “identity politics,” offering a Black feminist framework in which knowledge, revolutionary theory, and practice was created out of the lived experience and study of "interlocking" systems. I suggest the Statement’s theory of identity politics was not only a theory that centered Black women’s experiences in critiquing heterosexism, capitalism, and white supremacy, but also a method of knowledge-production in service of coalitionary politics. While it is critically important to center the Black feminist history and labor in its genesis, I also suggest that its methods of the “revolutionary leap” (Hong, 2015) might provide a pedagogical pathway toward learning in ways that catalyze contemporary coalitions. Drawing on my teaching of white clergy men, I explore how studying the Statement invites white men, who often don’t have methods for feminist praxis, into learning and joining the legacy of the coalitionary politics of Black feminism through developing their own feminist statements in 2025.

Creative projects can further student engagement with sexual ethics education that understands sexual justice as a social project, not merely a series of prohibitions on individuals. This paper describes projects such as mapping sexual geographies, roleplaying policy strategists, scripting meetcutes, and designing menstruation rituals. These assignments further learning objectives through creative action: they perform intersectional analysis of the risk of sexual violence, they create examples of how opportunities promoting sexual justice can be socially produced and/or hindered, and they orient students to democratic action for a sexual health and sexual justice-informed approach to public education. Lesson plans and assignments available as handouts for adaptation or re-use.