In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

In the early 2000s, Boston College, a Jesuit Catholic university, paid $168 million to the Boston Archdiocese in land purchases. During the same period, the archdiocese paid over $95 million in settlements to 627 victims of Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse. On the purchased property, the McMullen Art Museum now occupies the estate last inhabited by the infamous Cardinal Law, and the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry is housed in a building to its rear. Grounded in the work of Avery Gordon and using the method of autoethnography, I trace my own theological work in these spaces as an experience of paradoxical haunting – at once called to memory by knowledge of the victims, and tempted into forgetting by the good work now done within these walls. Such re-use of space is an explicit strategy of encouraged forgetting that negates processes for justice and facilitates the intergenerational impacts of abuse.

This paper examines the ways in which the myth of the family farm is constructed and maintained in rural America through memory, religion, and political discourse. Framed around a December 2024 letter from the Republican Governors Association, the paper explores how rural farmers are depicted as defenders of a virtuous agrarian lifestyle in opposition to a dangerous secular world. The family farm narrative functions as an intentional and institutionalized form of forgetting that obscures the realities of corporate-driven agriculture while reinforcing specific social, religious, and gendered ideals. Through this lens, the paper addresses the political and cultural stakes of mythmaking and forgetting in America’s heartland and questions how evangelical ideologies about nature, domination, and family structures shape the midwestern farm.

In October 1920, American Unitarians and their allies gathered in Plymouth, Massachusetts to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Pilgrim Fathers’ famous Mayflower voyage. While ostensibly following a familiar Christian nationalist narrative of the Pilgrims as the founders of a Christian America, the Unitarians ended up revising the history. The Pilgrims, they claimed, had been champions of “liberal” religious principles such as freedom, tolerance, and harmony, and therefore, their history should be celebrated as a “common past” for religious liberals across nations and traditions in the modern world. To visualize this, the Unitarians invited guests from many European countries and two Asian countries (Japan and India) who represented various Christian sects and even non-Christian faiths like Buddhism and Hinduism. Attempted at this international, interfaith commemoration was a radical transformation of the Pilgrims from a tiny community of seventeenth-century Calvinists to a global icon of modern liberal ecumenism.

In this paper, I develop a conception of queer forgetting, utilizing the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge gay bar fire, its 2003 memorialization, and planned 2025 rededication as case studies. The memory of marginalized groups is frequently fragile, subject to oppressive social and legislative forces, and often necessarily leaves little trace; this is particularly true of queer memory. I argue that in retrieving and reviving lost queer memories, historians must consider queer subjects’ opacity, lest archival violence perpetuate the suppression of contemporary queer voices. Bringing archival theory to bear on memory studies and drawing upon scholars like Charles Long, Edouard Glissant, I assert that those reclaiming the past must responsibly assess if there are names one should not recall, stories one should not tell. Perhaps some names, some stories, should be forgotten.

If Islamic eschatology invariably predicts the total destruction of the earth, what room does Islamic ethics afford the religious responsibility to presently prevent and mitigate harm? Putting contemporary popular Muslim intellectuals in Egypt with American prison abolitionists, I investigate how non-mainstream eschatological visions of inevitable human-led destruction create communities of ethical practices that shift the focus of political action away from futurity-oriented outcomes to the socio-political demands of the present moment. I consider how the cross-cutting grammar of intention in the work of Egyptian Islamists and US prison abolitionists relocates the temporal struggle against structural evil(s), which decouples the inevitability of finitude from fixed teleologies by accepting the likelihood of the failure, disruption, and incompletion of redress efforts. I consider the potential this move affords for experimentation in democratic, egalitarian, and self-critical ethical communities that do not reproduce the epistemological and political hierarchies of mainstream technological solutions to ecological crises.

Climate change is often identified as an urgent political problem with little done to address it, while other “urgent” problems garner far greater response. What happens when nothing happens in response to urgencies? How can urgency be restored as a motivating political idea—and should it be? This paper interprets Abraham Joshua Heschel’s understanding of the realms of time and space in The Sabbath (1951) to explore the relationship between urgency and climate change. It argues that Heschel’s distinction of time and space can be understood to assert true temporal urgency against what I call material urgencies, the sense of scarcity of finite goods that we often prioritize over and against the possibility of a future together. To recover a politically motivating sense of urgency about climate change, I argue, we must value the scarcity of time more than the scarcity of things and learn to see the difference between them.

The stories we consume about technology and AI have real-world consequences for how we develop and employ this technology. The dominant narratives of our technological predicament––techno-optimism and techno-pessimism––are both manifestations of a primarily Christian worldview that has previously informed American narratives of progress and history. Drawing from different critical theory, this presentation highlights issues at stake in the development of AI, including the stratification of social inequalities and environmental impact. I propose an alternative ethical orientation to technology, one rooted in Buddhist theories of cyclical time, interdependence, and the bodhisattva ethos.

​​It has become increasingly alluring to refer to the future of unabated climate change as a climate crisis, an apocalypse. In reaction to the rise of 'climate doomerism,' a peculiar faction has emerged within ecological discourse: ecomodernism. Ecomodernists argue that the limitlessness of human potential opens up a new world of possibility, wherein humanity is completely untethered from the material limits of our planet and energy is cheap, clean, and abundant for all. Drawing from queer ecology, decolonial thought, and critical secularism studies, this paper posits that the transcendent view of humanity lauded by ecomodernists represents the dominant secular eschatology of environmental thought. Engaging the work of Delf Rothe, Chris Methmann, and Ben Jones, I outline the secular eschatological views of ecomodernists and analyze the particular role of technology in ecomodernism. For ecomodernists, technology is the medium of salvation and liberation from human material finitude.

Using a mix-method approach, I engage Cultural Anthropology, Narrative Theory, and Black Queer Theology within a Black Posthumanist lens to investigate how Black Trans-masculine identities are shaped by and resist traditional hegemonic theological and cultural structures. This unique perspective allows me to both examine and develop contemporary literary works that elevate Black transmasculine identities. I argue that the intersecting identities of the Black Transmasculine experience are liberatory in and of themselves in that they challenge and reshape dominant notions of gender, race, and religion. Through narrative, I seek to illuminate how Transmasculine experiences challenge and reshape traditional theological frameworks, offering new possibilities for religious practice, community building, and freedom.

In his preface to the 1997 edition of God of The Oppressed, James Cone looks back and writes of his 1975 publication: “It still represents my basic theological perspective—that the God of biblical faith and black religion is partial toward the weak” (Cone, 1997).  However, he acknowledges in no uncertain terms that the perspectives of feminist, gay, womanist, Native American, and South African theologians, in particular, have transformed the content, form, and approach of his work.  This paper focuses on the significance of Cone’s critical reflection on and reconsideration of his own work – with an emphasis on the ways Cone’s perspectives on gender and sexuality evolved.  Through this paper contends that Cone’s way of looking back models a politically powerful form of humility that remains one of the most effective technologies available to those who are oppressed in quests for liberation.

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.