In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

In this paper I take seriously the need, at times, for dissemblance, but argue that telling, or disclosing, is also an act profoundly concerned with black futures. I explore the relationship between disclosure and place-making through the lens of Black women's writing. I argue that being in diaspora requires reckoning with the idea of place, even when one has been sold, stolen, or fled from their original home. I draw on Jennifer Nash's characterization of Black feminist theory-voice as "affectively saturated," "deliberately revelatory," and grappling with the ethics of disclosure. Using these categories, I consider how the work of Audre Lorde, the Black lesbian feminist poet warrior, does the work of telling and making place. Ultimately, I suggest that tellings, or the act of speaking one's truth, are spiritual work that create the space for struggle and pave the way for future(s). 

This paper examines Brazilian artist Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro’s 2023 installation which combined bricks, eucalyptus trees, earth, tarp, and basins to create a “Fictitious Museum of Objects Stolen by the Police.” Drawing on Tavia Nyong’o’s theories of “afro-fabulation” and “queer and trans aesthetics,” I argue Brasileiro’s work is an afro-fabulation—invoking the technology of the museum to work both with and against it. The installation not only “fabricat[ed] new genres of the human out of the fabulous, formless darkness of an anti-black world.” It called into question the human altogether, drawing on Umbanda and other Afro-Brazilian religions to insist on the memory and soul of objects, invoking both the history and agency of Afro-Brazilian religious materials confiscated by police. Saturating her museum with Umbanda theology, Brasileiro responded to the secular force of the museum with counter-theology, pursuing cosmological alternatives to address historical violence, dissolve difference, and access spiraled forms of time.

At the heart of this essay lies a critique of the economy of salvation through the three-time sale and re-sale of a six-year-old Black enslaved girl in mid-1800s Tennessee. While her bill of sale conflates “sound” with her capacity to possess the mental and physical faculties needed to produce capital, each slave sales her in the discovery of her refusal to speak. This refusal unsettles the presumed transparency between Black flesh and its assigned economic and social value, revealing the limits of biological legibility under racial capitalism. The line of inquiry proceeding the conclusion that “she was absolutely an idiot and of no value” questions the function of speculative value and how the act of exchange, confirmed by ocular-centric fantasy, qualifies the public conversion of unsound flesh into speech. By further investigating why the forced translation of the commodity is salvific, this paper engages Black exchangeability as a ritual of perception that deifies gender as biologically sovereign. 

Who “owns” mosques in Türkiye is a layered question, particularly regarding women’s varied roles and experiences. While mosque architecture often reflects male-centered frameworks, women’s relationships with these spaces are not uniform. Some see mosques as central to worship and social engagement; others avoid them for cultural or personal reasons. KADEM’s “Camiler Hepimizin” (“Mosques Belong to All of Us”) project evaluates “women-friendly” features quantitatively but does not capture women’s subjective perceptions. This paper compares two contrasting examples in Istanbul—the Fatih Hafız Ahmet Paşa Mosque (low score) and the Üsküdar Valide Cedid Mosque (high score)—to explore how women negotiate mosque spaces in practice. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s tactics, Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, and Doreen Massey’s power-geometry, I investigate how women engage, transform, or bypass these environments. Addressing the conference theme of “freedom,” this study reveals how “counter-hegemonic” spatial practices emerge, ultimately reshaping notions of worship, belonging, and spatial justice.

In the first three months of 2024, Kenya reported 97 femicide cases, adding to over 500 intimate partner femicides recorded between 2016 and 2023. This alarming trend has spurred the Kenyan feminist movement to demand action, leading to protests and the establishment of a 42-member government taskforce to address gender-based violence. Feminists are challenging religious and cultural norms that perpetuate patriarchal structures, often trapping women in cycles of abuse and denying them freedom. This paper explores the complex interplay between love, freedom, and systemic gender-based violence, analyzing femicide cases and feminist responses. It highlights how Kenyan women are resisting oppression, advocating for systemic change, and redefining love and freedom to prioritize safety, equality, and autonomy. Using a feminist lens, the paper critiques entrenched ideologies and calls for religious and cultural institutions to reinterpret freedom and love in ways that promote gender justice, emphasizing consent, autonomy, and mutual respect in relationships.

Complementarianism, a Christian and post-Christian understanding of gender in which men and women are understood to have intrinsically different bodies and characteristics that “complement” one another, is generally understood by western feminists as a discourse of patriarchal oppression. However, in this paper, the authors drawn on an indigenous theory of gender proposed by a group of learned nuns in contemporary Tibet to argue that the association between patriarchy and complementarianism is not universal, and should not be mapped onto non-western and non-Christian contexts. Rather, the Tibetan nuns’ theory of complementarian gender roles, working in tandem with a shrewd interpretation of the lived identity of motherhood as sources of liberative compassion, serves as a localized argument for gender equality in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism. 

This study explores how Korean women experienced freedom and liberation during and after the Japanese colonial period through the poem 어머님 말씀 (Ŏmŏnim Malssŭm), meaning ‘Mother’s Words,’ by Korean poet Gunho Kim. Based on stories passed down from his mother, the poem is one of the earliest literary works to address the suffering of Korean comfort women. The poem not only emphasizes political liberation but also conveys a deeper longing for true freedom from oppression.

Based on the poem, this research interrogates whether political liberation led to genuine freedom or if oppression continued to manifest. It also examines how the historical experiences of Korean women shaped their identity, spirituality, and acts of resistance. This study offers fresh insights into the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice among Korean women, aiming to contribute to a broader understanding of women’s rights, resistance, and the enduring impact of historical trauma.

This paper explores how Jewish women in Harbin, China (1898–1950), negotiated freedom within a self-governing diaspora community on a multi-ethnic frontier. Preserving Jewish identity amid Russian, Chinese, and Japanese influences, they defied historical constraints—displacement from pogroms, Japanese occupation—often underexplored by scholars emphasizing men’s contributions to economic and public life. Drawing on local archival sources—diaries, memoirs, and pictures—and comparisons with other diaspora communities, this research underscores their negotiated freedom as a model with contemporary relevance for multi-ethnic religious contexts. I argue that Jewish women secured freedom through education and ritual, blending biblical traditions with local practices—schools merging Jewish and Russian learning, Passover seders with Chinese elements. This process, termed “diasporic midrash,” a lived reinterpretation of tradition, sustained Jewishness without rabbinic authority, shaping Harbin’s cultural fabric. Their pragmatic freedom anchored resilience, offering a regional feminist lens on gender and religious identity with lasting resonance.

This paper evaluates contemporary Jain representations of capitalism and neoliberalism as expressed in interviews, Jain magazines, and biographies of Jain laymen, teases out continuities from Jainism’s mythic pasts to its contemporary religious practices. In communities such as the Jains where well-being and masculinity are publicly expressed through capital, much can be gained from examining the strategies deployed by men whose middle-class economic status limits their ability to participate in such material expressions of key values. The imperative of modern masculinity shapes how Jain laymen must negotiate the tensions between participating and winning at traditional Jain masculinity—the family man who is a generous religious donor—and integrating the economic pressures of neoliberal capitalism and its attendant individualism. Individuals have adapted modernist discourses, such as democratization, and the liberalization of the Indian economy, in order to open space for a new kind of Jain masculinity.

This paper considers Jain participation in discourses of “Dharmic capitalism,” surveying a spectrum of emic attitudes toward the relevance of principle tenants of Jain religion to navigating complexities of 21st century global free market commerce. Making use of interviews, popular media, and popular and academic publications advancing normative and prescriptive viewpoints, the author highlights Jain efforts to locate principles of free market capitalism within their own scriptural tradition, alongside present-day Jain attempts to reconcile the moral vicissitudes of the global financial marketplace with the strict Jain precepts of non-violence, non-possessiveness, and absolute truthfulness. The author examines what are in some cases direct correspondences between Hindu and Jain sentiments regarding the historical presence of liberal economic models in India historically, direct interface between Hindus and Jains which has generated a portion of this discourse, as well as discourses of “Jain exceptionalism,” i.e. insistence that Jain economic success has been historically supplemented with superlative models of philanthropy. 

This paper argues for the centrality of an expanded concept of “commercial capitalism” for understanding both the economic practices of Jains in the early 20th century, as well as why this association persists to this day. Following the historian Jairus Banaji, I argue that capitalism is neither simply commercial activity (Adam Smith’s famous “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange”) nor reducible simply to heavy industry. Drawing on archival data from Sirohi, a small independent Rajput kingdom, in the late colonial period, this paper puts forward a theory of how commercial capitalists, mostly Jain, came to dominate agrarian production. I then argue, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in modern Rajasthan and Gujarat, that contemporary perceptions of Jains are still primarily structured by this form of capitalism.

While exclusionary forces continue to claim Muslims do not belong in India, specific Muslims are uniquely visible across diverse genres of cultural representation. This paper focuses on the tension between official forms of Muslim exclusion and the visibility of certain types of Muslims in diverse media forms including commercial theatre, Hindi cinema, and heritage tourism. Questions this paper explores include: what kinds of Muslims are “sellable” for twenty-first century forms of cultural consumption? How are the goals and strategies of producers to make Muslims visible in genres of cultural representation shaped by the forces of twenty-first century, late-stage Indian capitalism and neoliberalism? The typologies of desirable Muslims in cultural representation identified in this paper reveal the socio-political conditions of religious belonging not just in India, but also in other secular democratic societies during twenty and twenty-first century late-stage capitalism. More than just simply entertainment, these moments of representation shape knowledge about religion, and particularly Islam, both for Muslims and non-Muslims.

Joining the Dots: Exploring the connections between Saint John Henry Newman and the Boston Personalists

There are a number of studies exploring the philosophical influences upon the development of personalism. However, while the decisive role of Saint Thomas Aquinas is frequently cited by Catholic writers, the various citations made to Saint John Henry Newman by a number of Boston Personalists has largely gone unnoticed. In a similar vein, while Newman commentators frequently compare his thought with this tradition, little or no attempt has been made to document this connection.  This paper explores the references made to Newman by figures such as Borden Parker Bowne (1847–1910), Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884–1953), Francis J. McConnell (1871–1953), George Albert Coe (1861–1951), and Ralph T. Flewelling (1871–1960) in order to explore whether or not the themes common to these writers possess a deeper connection.

This presentation will focus on the contributions of Rufus Burrow Jr. as a Boston Personalist. Furthermore, it will show how Burrow’s principles are applicable for addressing the fragmentation, acts of dehumanization, and contentious atmosphere that pervade of societies. This will be especially demonstrated through explication of Burrow’s framing of ethical prophecy. 

This paper analyzes the efficacy of Erazim Kohák’s ecological personalism in light of environmental disaster. Kohák’s extension of the category of person to non-human creatures in turn demands an emphasis on free responsibility and the capacity of metaphorical language as the distinguishing attributes of human persons. The event of environmental disaster pushes these two attributes to their limits, as is demonstrated through Kohák’s account of the dangers of historicism and romanticism. In analyzing the relationship between fate and finitude as it relates to human responsibility, I argue that the experience of the natural world as finite and fragile elicits a responsibility that refuses to be deferred. Turning to the work of Annie Dillard, I suggest that post-romantic nature writing concretizes Kohák’s effort to “speak with a tree,” demonstrating an ecopoetics of environmental disaster.

This paper explores the potential for a "postmodern personalism" by reinterpreting Boston Personalism(s) foundational ontological claims. While Boston Personalism typically centers on the ontological primacy of persons and their social relations, a postmodern approach interrogates the social conditions — such as race, gender, and sexuality — that shape these relations and which define personhood itself. Drawing on Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this framework highlights how the current U.S. political regime enforces hegemonic norms of personhood, making "deviants" hypervisible to enforce the norm. Rather than requiring recourse to universal moral absolutes, a postmodern personalist can utilize alternative interpretations of the existing value systems within which they are located, such as U.S. democracy or their Christian ethics, to reformulate ethical relations. They destabilize the hegemonic conception of personhood without essentializing alternatives, revealing the historical contingency of all concepts. This approach seeks not to discard personalism but to expand its critical relevance.

In the past decade, the decluttering trend—a broad phenomenon that includes movements such as Minimalism, Slow Living, Simple Living, Swedish Death Cleaning, Feng Shui, Underconsumption Core, and Marie Kondo—has gained a significant following in the United States. The decluttering trend attributes agency to objects and assumes that unnecessary objects in the home actively restrict human freedom. This paper examines the decluttering rituals people engage in to free themselves of the hold their possessions have over them. I argue that these decluttering rituals produce and subsequently obscure waste. Thus, decluttering rituals liberate people from their possessions by burdening marginalized populations and places with managing the waste and absorbing its toxicity.  

This paper uses influencer videos, Pinterest boards, and how-to blog posts to explore the intersection of space, gender, and evangelical religious practice in the space of the "prayer closet." It argues that the modern iteration of the prayer closet works as both an external demonstration of the user's piety and a way to claim religious power and authority in a community where women are expected to be, kind, nice, and prioritizing of others, if not explicitly submissive. Within her meticulously decorated prayer closet, a woman can wage war on forces of evil, whether they be Satanic influence or merely an upcoming midterm exam. Further, by waging this war in the privacy of her own home, a prayer closet user is able to claim the heroic violence of the title "prayer warrior" while maintaining the niceness that is appropriate to evangelical femininity everywhere outside of the prayer closet.

This study examines the ritual of serpent handling in Appalachian Pentecostal communities, drawing on fieldwork, practitioner interviews, and extensive analysis of books, articles, and videos. Using Cristina Bicchieri’s theories of unwritten rules, the research explores how implicit norms, such as the necessity of the “anointing,” sustain the ritual’s spiritual integrity and communal adherence. Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas highlight the transformative and unifying aspects of the practice, while Richard Schechner’s performance theories reveal the interplay between structure, spontaneity, and the dual purposes of efficacy and entertainment. By analyzing serpent handling as an embodied practice and a lived religion, this study demonstrates how the ritual bridges personal faith and collective identity. Through a multidisciplinary approach and diverse sources, the research contributes to a deeper understanding of the cultural, religious, and social dynamics that shape and sustain this unique tradition.

The concept of religion has proved rhetorically useful for both advocates and detractors of Bitcoin in their analysis of this new digital technology for storing and exchanging value, highlighting the good and wholesome aspects of religion or its irrational and dogmatic tendencies respectively. But scholars of religion have, thus far, mostly ignored cryptocurrencies. This paper turns to ritual theory to help us better understand this new technology and the freedom that its advocates find in it. I describe what Bitcoin is, discuss the reasons its advocates consider it liberating, and identify rituals that sustain Bitcoin “maximalists” in spite of the volatility of crypto markets. I argue that investing in Bitcoin can be understood as a ritual action that seeks to restructure power relations in the global economy, resulting in a sense of personal dignity and freedom.

This study will explore the intersection between multi-level marketing (MLM) and Christian spirituality among White American women by means of a systemic analysis of faith-based language and rhetoric that is utilized by members of MLMs. Through the use of qualitative content analysis, I will examine how MLMs like BODi, Amway, and Young Living engage their members in a form of spiritual consumer culture. Drawing from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Kathryn Lofton’s Consuming Religion, this project argues that MLMs not only engage in the buying and selling of products but also construct a faith-formed lifestyle that situates consumerism within religious identity. This study contributes to ongoing discussions in religious studies regarding the interest in spirituality and capitalism by revealing how faith-based consumerism reshapes Christian spirituality and promotes new forms of religious participation in late-stage capitalism. 

Through books, videos, podcasts, and webinars, the Henri Nouwen Society’s Caregiving Initiative aims to provide “practical and spiritual encouragement” to professional and family caregivers by sharing Nouwen’s “unique perspective on caregiving.” This paper analyzes the proliferation of caregiving resources through Nouwen’s legacy in light of two critical concerns: 1) the instrumentalization of intellectual disability for the spiritual transformation of nondisabled caregivers and 2) the valorization of sacrificial care labor under racial capitalism. By examining Nouwen’s account of spiritual transformation through care, I argue that these caregiving resources reinforce capitalist logics that reduce disabled people to the value they produce for nondisabled caregivers while simultaneously masking the exploitation of care labor (most often carried out by women of color) as a form of virtuous suffering. Ultimately, I reflect on whether and how care might be spiritually transformative, even as a site of ongoing violence and exploitation.

The cross-pollinating of religion and technology has found a new means of developing in Christian prayer apps. In our dataset of user-generated and publicly-shared prayers on a popular prayer app, thousands of evangelical Christian users submit thousands of daily prayer requests related to their health, relationships and finances. Data suggest that on the app – itself a product that is sold to churches as a platform for engagement – users increasingly turn to praying strangers for support for business venture, startups, and entrepreneurial creativity and flourishing. Differing patterns of prayer requests by gender and race [disclosed/provided by users] suggest that not only are business concerns increasing a part of spiritual practices, but that different segments of evangelical Christianity think and pray about business differently. Our paper contributes to conversations on spirituality, technology and media usage. 

Exodus 90 is an app-based Catholic men’s program whose stated goal is to aid participants in becoming “uncommonly free.” Three pillars of prayer, asceticism, and fraternity are the framework for this pursuit of freedom; this paper uses Exodus 90 as a case study revealing trends in the contemporary understanding of these three pillars and of spiritual freedom. It will review how Exodus 90 describes and promotes its program, integrating publicly available reflections on the program and using the lens of Foucault’s taxonomy of morality to explore points of contact between asceticism, ethics and subjectivity. It argues that by making an explicit appeal to discomfort in the spiritual life, Exodus 90 proposes a solution to consumer culture’s presumption of comfort, but must do so while engaging in the marketplace which encourages the pursuit of comfort that the program is meant to diminish.