In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

Holocaust survivors have long held a unique moral and cultural space in western societies, constructed by a combination of Holocaust remembrance institutions, media, policymakers, and the public, serving as both living witnesses to history and ethical figures. As their numbers decline, the reverence and authority associated with their testimony become increasingly transferred to digital forms. This paper seeks to explore the conceptualisation of Holocaust survivors as sacred or holy figures, and the challenges of preserving their moral authority in an era where direct testimony is no longer possible. By conceptualising Holocaust survivors in this way, it could be argued that eternalising their memory in digital formats reinforces their status as sacred, characterising survivors as moral exemplars in western society rather than mere historical witnesses. However, this paper critically examines the potential dangers to this sacralisation of survivors. 

One way Jewish survivors of the Holocaust sought to reclaim their lives and memories was by collaboratively authoring yizker bikher, memorial books, devoted to the lives and deaths of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. There are over 1,000 of these place-based volumes, written to memorialize the hometowns of the writers and to pass collective community memory to descendants of both the victims and the survivors. 

Created not as objective monographs but as portable containers of memory, yizker bikher are both books and objects, and contain text and images that work in tandem. They are comprised of rich descriptions of everyday life before the war and – only towards the very end of any given volume – individual and communal experiences during the Nazi era. Equally present in the books are hand-drawn maps, sketches, religious iconography, photographs, and documents from daily life.

Editors of, and contributors to, yizker bikher commonly asserted that the books were intended as matzeyve, gravestones. Through an examination of the narrative, visual, and material structures of the volumes, my paper considers yizker bikher as sacred objects, and explores the implications of that claim on the critical examination of the material they contain.

This presentation examines the complicated status of perpetrator materials at Holocaust museums and archival collections -- specifically, the manner in which they tend to be perceived by students, donors, and visitors as "disgraceful" or unsettling. Nazi-related materials are often described as standing in stark contrast to the sacred artifacts, documents, and photos of Holocaust survivors or victims. Drawing from research conducted at two sites (a college archive and a Holocaust museum), the author unpacks questions such as: Is there space for perpetrator materials at sites that seek to preserve the sacred memory of survivors and victims? What specific emotions and reactions do these artifacts evoke for donors, students, and others? Are efforts made at these sites to contain or limit the power of Nazi flags and other symbols of hatred? And what, if anything, might such objects teach us about the realities of war and genocide?

The Shi‘i Islamic tradition of Nazri—votive food offered during religious ceremonies, particularly in Muharram—has long been an expression of devotion to the martyred Imams, commemorated through communal meals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on gatherings led many Shi‘i organizations to shift their Nazri practices online. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, this paper examines the emergence of the digital votive in pandemic-era Shi‘i Iran, where meaning-making, meal consumption, and prayer intertwined with virtual space.

This study explores how digital platforms, particularly social media and interactive apps, both constrained and redefined communal sacred eating, fostering an ephemeral online religious community of mourning. It also examines supplemental eating, where one devotee symbolically eats on behalf of another, replicating votive consumption across digital and physical realms. Ultimately, this paper argues that while digital votive practices lack physical immediacy, they extend and reimagine the votive meal, shaping new forms of participation in religious remembrance.

In the contemporary digital landscape, Muslim artists are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to reclaim narratives, challenge Islamophobia, and reshape religious healing discourses. This paper examines how digital art functions as a form of spiritual and collective healing in response to structural violence, algorithmic bias, and the socio-political trauma experienced by Muslim communities. Through a case study of Muslim artists using AI software such as MidJourney, I explore how digital art not only shifts public perceptions of Islam but also integrates lived religious identities into digital spaces. Drawing on Gary Bunt’s (2024) concept of Islamic algorithms and Heidi Campbell’s (2012) framework of lived religion, this study investigates how AI-driven Islamic artistic expressions create digital sanctuaries that reinforce resilience, belonging, and new modes of religious engagement.

This paper examines the online content of Isabella Ma, known as Steakandbuttergal on TikTok. This paper brings analysis of far-right wellness rhetoric into conversation with Catherine Albanese’s concept of the “enlightened body-self,” the tradition within American metaphysical religion that values “the physical as a route to the transcendent.” Like the Liver King, Raw Egg Nationalist, and other carnivores examined by Marek, Rooney, and Cerja in “Long Live the Liver King,” Ma invokes a mythologized, primal, past where men and women lived true to their nature. And like the women in Catherine Tebaldi’s “Granola Nazis and the Great Reset,” Ma’s embodiment of normative feminine beauty is her source of authority on healing and salvation. But Ma also reveals the contested nature of far-right gender traditionalism, placing her feminine beauty in juxtaposition to her masculine-coded meals, contesting traditional gender expectations, and laying her own claim to the head of the table.

The War on Drugs has recently been overshadowed in the headlines by the “psychedelic renaissance,” a renewed interest in psychedelics as therapeutic medicines and spiritual tools. Despite the growing popularity of psychedelics, harsh penalties for drug possession have continued to threaten psychedelic users around the world. The rise of internet forums in the 1990s gave psychonauts a newfound freedom to share information, experiences, and recipes with likeminded individuals. Along with this freedom came the implicit requirement of anonymity, embodied by the acronym SWIM (“someone who isn’t me”), which is commonly used on forums. This paper analyzes the role of trip reports and drug forums in online psychonautic communities. I argue that online psychedelic forums developed in tandem with the rise of the public forum as a source of informational authority for the general population, representing a shift in spiritual authority from traditional religious institutions to the anonymous psychonautic collective.

This paper introduces the concept of meme rituals—digitized religious practices that utilize online platforms to reproduce and disseminate in a memetic fashion, often manifesting as emojis, images, or interactive applications. Focusing on the Chinese cyberspace, the study employs a multidisciplinary approach integrating material culture studies and historiography to critically analyze the affordances of meme rituals within the unique historical and social context of contemporary China. I argue that the reinvention of rituals in Chinese cyberspace not only changes the format and medium of religious practices but also fundamentally transforms how individuals engage with deeply meaningful cultural and social experiences. By building the framework of meme rituals and analyzing its broader implication, this paper seeks to contribute to the late-blooming field of religion in Chinese cyberspace and the general understanding of technologization of everyday religious rituals.

Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, are a form of internet based interactive storytelling that blurs the lines between fiction and reality. ARGs present their narrative as true through what is called an “aesthetic of authenticity,” sometimes creating confusion over what is an ARG or genuine. Given that some ARGs present themselves as internet based religions, this can make it difficult for scholars to tell whether what they are observing is “real.” I will illustrate this difficulty with the case of the TSUKI Project, whose followers were split over whether they were following a real religion or playing an ARG. In bringing together the digitality of new religions and invented religions, I argue that whether the TSUKI Project originated as an ARG does not determine its authenticity as a religion. Rather, if its followers believe it to be real, what we are observing is authentic religious practice.

This paper presents a creative and interdisciplinary approach to teaching Gurbānī Sangīt (the music of Sikh scriptural hymns) at a North American college as part of efforts to decolonize Liberal Arts education. Grounded in the decolonial notion of ‘listening as a way of knowing’ (Feld 2024; Becker 2004), the courses emphasize practical engagement with the pluriversal vision enshrined in the songs transmitted in Sikh Scripture and Gurbānī oral literature, as an ecology of knowledges (Santos 2014) inclusive of Bhakti and Sufi voices. This experiential approach provides an avenue to reflect on the role that kīrtan, or the singing of devotional poetry, had - and still has - in transmitting spiritual knowledges from the Global South. Additionally, by reviving the pre-colonial pedagogy, Gurbānī Sangīt classes create opportunities to explore Sikh history, philosophy, and practices while learning firsthand the rāga and tāla system, along with traditional instruments to perform kīrtan’s heritage compositions.

Decolonizing pedagogy is a crucial endeavor for the discipline of religious studies to undertake to better understand and explore religious traditions that have long been understood through a colonial lens, such as Sikhi. Fortunately, Sikh scholars continue to  provide indigenous perspectives on the dynamic development of Sikhi as a religious, cultural, and politically sovereign empire; yet a successful course focused on decolonizing pedagogy must do more than emphasize scholarship within a tradition.  This paper focuses on the successful implementation of a recently developed decolonizing teaching method, Interfaith Community-Advised Pedagogy (ICAP), in which courses are co-taught between religious studies faculty and members of minority religious traditions to gain first-hand knowledge about how religions are lived.  After we (a religious studies professor and Sikh activist) collaborated on the ICAP framework, our class was able to engage with indigenous scholarship, build rapport with a Sikh community, and effectively center Sikh sovereignty with students.

This presentation explores how engaged learning and experiential pedagogies of seva (selfless service), simran (meditative reflection and contemplation), sakhi (storytelling), shabd (song/word) and sangat (community engagement) can function as decolonial practices to transform the self in relation to community, past, present, and future. Through student engagement in the course Sikhism: Sage Warrior and collaborations with grassroots initiatives led by activists, artists, and musicians, I will examine the ways in which the afore mentioned pedagogical approaches can provide a transformative framework for student learning and collective well-being. 

Altars have long served as sacred spaces of memory, reverence, revelation, and restoration, evolving to meet the spiritual needs of various communities. This paper explores how altars function as a metaphor for Black women’s evolving spirituality in the fourth wave of womanism. Like altars, Black women’s spirituality embodies both tradition and fluidity, as they reclaim ancestral practices and craft autonomous, inclusive faith traditions beyond Christian doctrine. Through the dimensions of remembrance, reverence, revelation, and re-membering, Black women create spiritual spaces that honor ancestors, engage divine presence, receive wisdom, and heal from systemic oppression. Drawing from historical shifts in Christian altars, womanist theology, and contemporary critiques of religious exclusion, this study highlights how Black women’s spirituality is a site of liberation. It argues that the fourth wave of womanism calls for a faith that is expansive, self-determined, and rooted in radical wholeness, offering Black women sacred autonomy in their spiritual journeys.

There are many hardships that are encountered by members of the Africana diaspora in efforts to remember and reclaim lost ancestral memories. However, the desire to belong to a communal identity located in a particular set of ancestral memories facilitate what Dionne Brand refers to as “way-finding.” In her book A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes on Belonging, Brand argues that religion is one of many methods of way-finding that can be used as a means to navigate the Black experience of a ruptured historical memory resultant from the practice of colonialism and slavery. Using Julie Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust to illustrate Brands notion of way-finding, this body of work contends that diasporic religious practices like Hoodoo, are legitimate methods of way-finding that have resulted in loving and caring connections to one’s lost ancestral past, themselves, and others.

This discussion explores some of the ways we catalog and document the Black, Latinx, and Indigenous cultures in our foodways systems, focusing especially on how history is passed down in the preparation of hand-patted foods at the kitchen table. Here is where we can reclaim the art of oral history, of inducting new griots in the skill of retelling our stories. Some attention will be given to food storytelling through film and television, including the 1997 Black film classic, Soul Food, Norman Lear’s classic 1970s sitcom, Good Times, and the 2001 comedy, Tortilla Soup. A cursory look will be given to Idiomatic and cultural expressions, like this food is so good you put your foot into it, or this food is bucklin’ or you did that! as a means of gratitude and extension of the social mores and values that are learned at the kitchen table.

This presentation will explore the concept of the “Womanist Athlete” as a framework for understanding the significance of Black women’s movement as acts of liberation. First, I will define the term Womanist Athlete, situating it within Womanist theology &  ethics. Second, I will examine the lives of Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, and Serena Williams, demonstrating how each exemplifies athleticism: Tubman as an Endurance Athlete, Davis as a Political Athlete, and Williams as a Olympic Athlete. Third, I will argue that beyond their roles as historical & cultural figures, all three are theologians of liberation. Finally, I will engage the works Townes, Williams, Copeland, and Coleman to explore the role of imagination and hope in Black women’s experiences. By bringing these scholars into conversation with the lives of Tubman, Davis, and Williams, this presentation will illuminate how Black women’s movement—whether through escape, activism, or professional sports—serves as a theological act of liberation.

When accomplished visual artists join the monastic Order in Buddhist China (and thus enter a new “community of emotions”), is there room for continued expression of emotions through artistic engagement? Abundant primary sources enable granular study of Hongyi (1880-1942), a notably accomplished man of the arts who became a monk at age thirty-eight. Here we will consider complex issues related to emotions, discipline, and creative activities through examination of: (1) the eminent monk Yinguang’s written teachings to Hongyi in the 1920s about calligraphy (including blood writing) and its procedures in monastic contexts; (2) the witness of Hongyi’s sustained body of visual work created in this new context - what he actually created (and why), as well as what he no longer created; and (3) after he came to maturity as a Vinaya master, Hongyi’s cautionary yet encouraging statements and teachings regarding the role of artistic expression within a monastic vocation.

This paper contributes to research on emotions and Chinese religion by examining the laughter of derision directed at female spirit mediums. These women occupy an ambiguous role in Chinese historical texts. Some accounts depict them as vital intermediaries who communicate with the unseen for the benefit of local communities, while others condemn them as charlatans who undermine social morality. The article analyzes the literary trope of mocking female mediums in three stages: from the Han dynasty, through the late imperial period, and into the Maoist era. Through their derisive laughter at female mediums, Chinese elites crafted narratives about civilization, modernization, and revolution. Yet even as these women became objects of ridicule, their portrayal in elite writings inadvertently reveals their crucial role in local religious life. The power dynamics of laugher offer important insights into the intersections of gender, emotion, and politics in Chinese religious history.

This paper explores the emotional facets of Hakka pilgrimage practices at a temple to the bodhisattva Guanyin 觀音 situated on the outskirts of the town Daxi 大溪in northern Taiwan. Its analytical framework draws on Tuan Yi-fu’s concept of “topophilia” (defined as “the affective bond between people and place or setting”) to hypothesize that sacred sites like the Guanyin Temple lie at the heart of what I tentatively term a “cultural nexus of feelings” featuring the moving experience of journeying on pilgrimage accompanied by family members along paths trodden by one’s ancestors that inspire memories of individual lives and family histories. Thus, worshippers at the Guanyin Temple experience feelings of well-being due to its serving as a ritual and affective venue for coping with life’s challenges, while also joining with family members to enjoy time together and recall memories from their childhood or stories told by their forebears.

This paper explores how the affective aspects of reciprocity in the deity-human relationship are essential to understanding the vitality of pilgrimage practices in the cult of the Goddess of Mount Tai. Inspired by Monique Scheer’s use of practice theory in the history of emotions and Barbara Rosewein’s work on emotional communities, this paper explores how exhortations about pilgrimage practices in three widely circulated baojuan 寶卷(precious scrolls) shape what devotees do and feel. I showcase how these texts use the word gandong 感動 (stimulate and move) to depict the Goddess as physically stimulated and emotionally moved by her devotees’ prayers, and propose to appropriate the indigenous notion of gandong as an interpretive lens to capture an intimate deity-human relationship unmediated by the impersonal, metaphysical correlation of cosmos and virtue.

This paper examines the conservative political influence of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The impetus for the organization came from missionary-turned-pop-intellectual Francis Schaeffer who insisted that American evangelicals had lost their commitment to both the inerrant Bible and the US Constitution that it allegedly inspired. Other politically-active evangelical leaders, and others abstained precisely because they saw the “political cast” of the ostensibly theological organization. Through its 1982 Congress on the Bible, the 1983 “Year of the Bible,” and its 1986 Statement on Biblical Application, the ICBI made its connection with the Reagan Revolution clear. Ultimately, the ICBI showed that evangelical biblicism was not separate from the emerging culture wars. Rather, a literalist theo-political hermeneutic of biblical and constitutional interpretation drove a much larger and more lasting fight over definitions of evangelicalism, religious liberty, and American law.

This paper will examine Conservative American Christians who believe that Biblical Inerrancy provides the moral defense for racism in several forms: African slavery, production of the Slave Bible, and the rejection of Critical Race Theory. These defenses are best observed in The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), the views and agenda of Albert Mohler Jr former President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Richard Furman’s letter “Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population...”, and Voddie Baucham’s book Fault Lines that rejects Critical Race Theory.

Defense of American slavery, creation of the Slave Bible, and the contemporary rejection of Critical Race theory all stem from the controversial reality that Biblical Inerrancy is part of the same heritage that continues to demand Black inequality within ideal Conservative American Christian culture and society.

Since its modern development in the 1970s and 80s, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy has worked to protect inherited beliefs by minimizing and often demonizing alternative interpretations of scripture, presenting them as biblically subversive and thus necessarily erroneous. Utilizing new interviews with Beth Allison Barr (The Making of Biblical Womanhood, 2021) and Sarah Stankorb (Disobedient Women, 2023), this paper will tell one part of this much larger story, particularly how inerrancy has been weaponized to promote and protect a patriarchal theology of authority, submission, and abuse. Special attention will be paid to how inerrancy has been used to attack Barr, Stankorb, and others via social media, blogs, reviews, sermons, books, and threats of lawsuit. The weaponization of inerrancy is a lived reality for these and other authors, many of whom have dared offer a hermeneutic of risk that takes seriously our historical consciousness and thereby challenges inerrancy’s desire for certainty

Opposition to reproductive freedom can be understood as a symbolic masculinity that defends a particular religious tradition as well as the discursive economy of project 2025 Given the current political climate and the rise of evangelical restrictions to other’s freedoms through legislative action, understanding this symbolic masculinity is important both communally and for the academy. Leaning on the scholarly works of Butler, Cassino, Ammerman, and Primary source documents from the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, this paper advances the following claims. Reproductive freedom liberates women from their assumed participation in the “form” of the receptacle. Reproductive Freedom creates a sense of communal and personal crisis for evangelicals who affirm Biblical Inerrancy and Complementarianism. This sub-culture contains materializes the body through the perpetuation of “conversational plausibility structures” and a sexed economy grounded in a perpetuation of Plato’s receptacle strangely arising from an interpretation of the “inerrant” biblical text.

This paper examines the conservative political influence of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The impetus for the organization came from missionary-turned-pop-intellectual Francis Schaeffer who insisted that American evangelicals had lost their commitment to both the inerrant Bible and the US Constitution that it allegedly inspired. Other politically-active evangelical leaders, and others abstained precisely because they saw the “political cast” of the ostensibly theological organization. Through its 1982 Congress on the Bible, the 1983 “Year of the Bible,” and its 1986 Statement on Biblical Application, the ICBI made its connection with the Reagan Revolution clear. Ultimately, the ICBI showed that evangelical biblicism was not separate from the emerging culture wars. Rather, a literalist theo-political hermeneutic of biblical and constitutional interpretation drove a much larger and more lasting fight over definitions of evangelicalism, religious liberty, and American law.

This paper will examine Conservative American Christians who believe that Biblical Inerrancy provides the moral defense for racism in several forms: African slavery, production of the Slave Bible, and the rejection of Critical Race Theory. These defenses are best observed in The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), the views and agenda of Albert Mohler Jr former President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Richard Furman’s letter “Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population...”, and Voddie Baucham’s book Fault Lines that rejects Critical Race Theory.

Defense of American slavery, creation of the Slave Bible, and the contemporary rejection of Critical Race theory all stem from the controversial reality that Biblical Inerrancy is part of the same heritage that continues to demand Black inequality within ideal Conservative American Christian culture and society.

Since its modern development in the 1970s and 80s, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy has worked to protect inherited beliefs by minimizing and often demonizing alternative interpretations of scripture, presenting them as biblically subversive and thus necessarily erroneous. Utilizing new interviews with Beth Allison Barr (The Making of Biblical Womanhood, 2021) and Sarah Stankorb (Disobedient Women, 2023), this paper will tell one part of this much larger story, particularly how inerrancy has been weaponized to promote and protect a patriarchal theology of authority, submission, and abuse. Special attention will be paid to how inerrancy has been used to attack Barr, Stankorb, and others via social media, blogs, reviews, sermons, books, and threats of lawsuit. The weaponization of inerrancy is a lived reality for these and other authors, many of whom have dared offer a hermeneutic of risk that takes seriously our historical consciousness and thereby challenges inerrancy’s desire for certainty

Opposition to reproductive freedom can be understood as a symbolic masculinity that defends a particular religious tradition as well as the discursive economy of project 2025 Given the current political climate and the rise of evangelical restrictions to other’s freedoms through legislative action, understanding this symbolic masculinity is important both communally and for the academy. Leaning on the scholarly works of Butler, Cassino, Ammerman, and Primary source documents from the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, this paper advances the following claims. Reproductive freedom liberates women from their assumed participation in the “form” of the receptacle. Reproductive Freedom creates a sense of communal and personal crisis for evangelicals who affirm Biblical Inerrancy and Complementarianism. This sub-culture contains materializes the body through the perpetuation of “conversational plausibility structures” and a sexed economy grounded in a perpetuation of Plato’s receptacle strangely arising from an interpretation of the “inerrant” biblical text.

This paper will argue that a fuller understanding of Black fugitivity is achieved when regarding its sonic properties. That sound, I contend, can be located at the site of the Black sermon. I therefore intend to theorize the phenomenon of call-and-response that participates in the Black fugitive sounds heard on any given Sunday in Black churches across the United States. The sounds that inhabit the sanctuary during the sermon form what I name as the endophonic counterwitness that designates Black churches’ sanctuaries as a ‘within-space’ where the gathered congregation maroons themselves weekly. My argument attends to the ways that the sound objects—the preacher’s voice, the Hammond organ, and the gathered congregation—fuse together in the sanctuaries in Black churches forming a fugitive sound. 

This paper considers marronage as a historical and theoretical embodiment of freedom within a political economy structured by self-propriety. Placing the escape from slavery within the a Lockean account of property, I show how enslavement depends on a vision of self-mastery that mirrored the enclosure of land. Escape from slavery was not becoming a self-possessed individual but depended upon relationships between oneself and the more-than-human world, especially the connection between wild and cultivated land. To think about marronage as a practice of freedom not predicated upon self-propriety, I offer exorcism as a way of imagining liberation from property. This account not only avoids the limitations of theories of dispossession, but also allows for an understanding of freedom capacious enough to include humans and more-than-humans in the sphere of political consideration.

Political theorists, philosophers, and scholars of religion have not sufficiently examined how maroons have historically shaped and articulated visions of freedom. Notable exceptions—such as political theorist Neil Roberts’ groundbreaking theorization of freedom as marronage in the context of the Haitian Revolution—have largely overlooked marronage in North America, likely due to the long-standing assumption that maroon communities there never reached a politically significant scale. However, recent archaeological excavations in the Great Dismal Swamp of northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia challenge this assumption, providing compelling evidence of large-scale, long-term maroon communities. These discoveries have prompted archaeologists and historians to reassess the dominant narratives surrounding these communities. In this presentation, I examine the promises and limitations of theorizing freedom as marronage in the context of the Great Dismal Swamp. I propose three key concepts—flight, holding ground, and illegibility—as foundational to developing a critical lexicon for this theorization.

This paper examines how the migration of Old Colony Mennonites to Maya territory in southeastern Mexico represents a form of fugitivity that simultaneously resists and reproduces colonial logics, drawing on religious myths to fuel eschatological visions of utopia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with both Mennonite and Maya communities, this paper focuses on Mennonite narrations of their relationship with land and scriptural texts to understand how Mennonites envision “a good place.” The paper explores the contradictions that arise as Mennonite communities attempt to enshrine particular freedoms through separatist communities while participating in agro-industrial systems that damage ecosystems and neighboring Indigenous communities. We interpret these contradictions through a reading of analogous visions of utopia in Mennonite communities and in the book of Revelation. In doing so, we aim to complicate binary understandings of resistance and complicity to power structures, suggesting that utopic visions of freedom can simultaneously offer possibilities for liberation and justifications of harm.