In-person November Annual Meeting 2026 Program Book

Are Tactile Studies, Olfactory Studies, and Gustatory Studies coming down the track? The visual and sonic came first, perhaps because seeing and hearing, more than the other senses, are involved with complex processes of human communication and conceptualization. But all the senses, along with the mind (regarded as a sense organ in Indian analyses of consciousness), are deeply intertwined in human experience and knowledge production. Studying North Indian religious poetry that is both literature and music, I approached it through oral traditions and aural experience, producing two books that contributed to Sound Studies in India. I have come to see Sound Studies as an avenue to Full Body Studies. In this paper, I will present three poems of Kabir, first as literature, then as song, inviting the audience to notice their own experience and to consider the implications of uniting mind and body in their own work.

During my on-and-off fieldwork with the Baul ascetic musicians over the past six years, I most recently interviewed a respected elder at his home in West Bengal, India, in August, 2025. Based on this ethnographic data, I will argue that my informant's devotional singing practice and aural relationship with the goddess led him to visualize her speaking to him. This suggests that innovative devotees can effectively interiorize the process, relocating the ritual within the body. This blurs the boundaries between tantric (ritual emphasis) and bhakto (emotional emphasis), categories often misunderstood as distinct. His case study exemplifies resilient aurality as he mediates between the devotional interiority and the horrifying exteriority of the cremation ground. We witness his radical inverse sacrifice, and visions that do not require eyes. Through oral narrative, this paper documents a rare example of synesthetic religious vision without sight, underscoring the need for future research.

This paper examines two distinctive practices of orality and aurality among Bhīl Adivasi communities in northeastern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan. Drawing on ethnographic research among Bhīl performers and devotees, it analyzes how orality and aurality are understood as material substances that can accumulate within and transform the human body. The study focuses on two devotional practices: the singing of bhajanvārtās (devotional song-narratives) during the ritual of dhuṇvu, and the listening to kathāvārtās, narrative discourses circulated among Bhīl devotees initiated into the BAPS Swaminarayan tradition. In dhuṇvu, sung words are believed to reside within the body prior to their release through song, ideally emerging from the heart to generate events of ecstatic possession. In kathāvārtā, attentive listening allows sacred narratives to accumulate within the body, forming what practitioners call śabda śarīra, a “body of words”, which is a vessel for cleansed senses, memory, mind, and consciousness.  

This paper examines the concept of bhāvanā in Yaśovijaya’s Dvātriṃśaddvātriṃśikā, showing how it links ethical cultivation with ontological transformation. Bhāvanā in this text denotes a sustained and discerning practice of inner cultivation oriented toward the self. Yaśovijaya presents it as the disciplined formation of ethical virtues that gradually reshape one’s inner condition, weakening harmful tendencies and stabilizing wholesome dispositions. External religious acts, he argues, function only as supports; what ultimately determines moral value and soteriological progress is the condition of the soul itself. Liberation, described as śuddha-bhāva (pure state of being), emerges through this gradual refinement rather than through mere realization or ritual performance alone. By tracing discussions of intention, conduct, meditation, and the self, I show that bhāvanā functions as the process through which ethical practice produces enduring dispositions, linking ethical cultivation to transformation at the level of being.

This paper examines bhakti (devotion) to the Jina as a practice of ethical cultivation, mapping how Jain literature in Sanskrit may work to engender in its reader a devotional attitude toward the figure of the Jina. I focus on a the 33rd canto of Jinasena’s Book of Beginnings, a ninth century-CE hagiography of the first Jina, Adinatha. This canto follows Bharata, one of Adinatha’s sons, as he ascends Mount Kailasa to pay homage to his father. During this ascent, I track how Jinasena prepares his reader to ethically meditate upon the Jina’s good qualities once the Jina is met at the mountaintop. I demonstrate that it is not only Bharata who follows a path up Mount Kailasa, and not just Bharata who is meant to offer devotional bhakti to the Jina. The reader also traverses a path aimed to set their mind towards offering ethically formative devotion to the Jina.

I will discuss how selected narratives related by medieval Jain authors aim to contribute to ethical cultivation by promoting Jain virtues in the (especially non-ascetic) reader. Jain society is traditionally divided into four groups (monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen), on each of whom specific societal expectations are imposed. I will show how the stories of the laymen Amarasīha (in Somaprabhasūri’s Kumārapālapratibodha) and Agaḍadatta (in Devendra’s Uttarādhyayanaṭīkā) and the laywomen Rohiṇī (in Āmradevasūri’s commentary on the Ākhyānamaṇikośa) and Ārāmasohā (in Devacandrasūri’s commentary on Pradyumnasūri’s Mūlaśuddhiprakaraṇa) aim to form virtuous subjects by presenting models for different groups in engaging and memorable narrative contexts and illustrating the rewards of good behavior, while characters like Amarasīha’s violent brother Samarasīha and Agaḍadatta’s unfaithful wife, Mayaṇamañjarī, act as negative role models discouraging undesired characteristics/behavior.

The Cultural Revolution served as a critical catalyst that shaped Catholic politics on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In mainland China, local authorities persecuted clergy and believers, portraying Catholicism as an ideological enemy of the revolutionary state. To oppose the Cultural Revolution that destroyed traditional culture, the Taiwan government encouraged Catholic leaders to align religious practices with state–sponsored cultural nationalism. Some clergy even incorporated rituals honoring figures such as the Yellow Emperor into Catholic ceremonies and prayed for the Republic of China. Drawing on newly discovered local archives from mainland China during 1966–1976, records from the Taiwan government, church documents, and Catholic memoirs, this paper argues that despite opposite political treatments, enemy in mainland China and ally in Taiwan, Catholicism in both societies was ideologically instrumentalized by competing Cold War regimes. These processes reshaped church–state relations, religious practice, and Catholic identities across the Taiwan Strait.

This paper examines the Chinese indigenous theology of Baptist pastor and theologian Chow Lien-hwa (1920–2016), focusing on how the Chinese diasporic context of postwar Taiwan shaped both the content of this theology and the form of “Chinese” identity it articulated. The mass migration of mainland Chinese to Taiwan after 1949—of which Chow was a part—created a distinctive diasporic setting in which a displaced Chinese community maintained cultural and linguistic dominance under the Republic of China regime while interacting with a postcolonial Taiwanese society. Through close textual analysis of Chow’s theological works from the 1970s, this paper argues that mainland memory, ROC political ideology, and long-term settlement in Taiwan together reshaped Chow’s Chinese Christian identity as the product of a distinctive diasporic experience. Situating Chow’s theology within this context highlights Taiwan as an underexplored site of Chinese Christian diaspora for understanding Chinese Christianities as World Christianity.

This paper examines how shifting eschatological imaginaries shaped the missionary and public-theological development of the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism (CCCOWE), the most extensive transnational Chinese Protestant network since its founding in 1976. Early CCCOWE leaders, especially Rev. Thomas Wang, drew on Dispensationalist apocalypticism to frame Chinese evangelism as an urgent “final baton relay,” mobilizing global missionary activism. By contrast, younger leaders influenced by the Lausanne Movement’s “Whole Gospel” articulated holistic understandings of mission that integrated social concern, public engagement, and emerging forms of Christian counterculture. Through analysis of CCCOWE publications and archival materials, this paper traces how these contrasting eschatologies circulated across Hong Kong, North America, and the United Kingdom, generating new modes of public theology within global Chinese Christianity. It argues that the movement’s gradual shift from apocalyptic anxiety to eschatological hope reshaped Chinese evangelical identity and expanded Christian social participation by 2010.

Chinese-language seminaries, both in East Asia and across the diaspora, have largely not incorporated the insights of world Christianity scholarship into their curricula, even as Western theological institutions increasingly offer such courses as part of efforts to decolonize theological education. This paper argues that Chinese-language seminaries cannot simply adopt world Christianity curricula as developed in Western institutions. The field’s prevailing cartography, organized around a Global South/Global North axis, reflects a Western subject position that does not map onto the positionality of Chinese theological education. A direct transplantation risks replacing one form of epistemological dependency with another. The paper identifies five areas where curricular remapping is necessary, including attention to the East-West axis of Christianity under communist regimes, Indigenous Christianity in North America, and Christianity in the East Asian. It further addresses practical questions of implementation, including AI-powered translation tools and a thematically organized course outline as a model for adaptation.

This paper examines Buddhist Dragon King rainmaking rituals in China as a ritual response to ecological crisis. Drawing on Huayan Buddhist philosophy—particularly Fazang’s doctrine of Dependent Arising in the Dharmadhātu—it argues that these rituals embody a relational cosmology in which humans, natural forces, and spiritual beings participate in an interconnected ecological network. Combining textual analysis, historical research, and ethnographic observation, the study explores both scriptural rainmaking traditions and a contemporary ritual performed during a drought in northern China in 2023. Engaging ritual theory from Catherine Bell and Victor Turner, the paper interprets rainmaking rituals not simply as petitions for rainfall but as communal practices that cultivate ecological awareness, solidarity, and ethical responsibility toward the natural world. In light of the 2026 AAR Presidential Theme “Future,” the paper suggests that Buddhist ritual traditions offer important resources for reimagining ecological relationships and developing religious responses to the global climate crisis.

Across the world’s expanding road networks, millions of animals are killed by vehicles each year. Despite its scale and visibility, roadkill is widely normalized as an inevitable byproduct of modern transportation infrastructure rather than examined as an ethical or religious problem. This paper asks whether Buddhist ritual traditions offer resources for transforming how humans perceive and respond to roadkill in the ecological conditions of the Anthropocene. Drawing on ritual theory—particularly Catherine Bell’s understanding of ritual as a practice that reshapes perception and social relations—alongside Buddhist cosmology and road ecology, the paper argues that roadkill should be understood not merely as an infrastructural accident but as a form of everyday ecological violence. Examining Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist practices of animal care—including animal release (fang sheng 放生), chanting rituals, and funerary rites for animals—the paper shows how ritual cultivates attentiveness, mourning, and ethical responsibility toward more-than-human life.

Making talismans, an important tradition in Daoism, involves a series of complex actions during the writing process. The performative characteristics of these actions are central to finalizing the communication with nature and the talisman’s efficacy. I first investigate how Daoist talismanic writing and its associated practices are presented in early medieval Sanhuang texts, and then explore how this tradition was transformed into the later practice of Thunder Rites (leifa 雷法) during the Song dynasty. Drawing on fieldwork, I also consider how Daoist talismanic practices are understood and enacted in contemporary contexts. Building on John Lagerwey’s analysis of the role of Daoist ritual in Chinese society, I argue that making talismans embedded in broader Daoist ritual practice performs efficaciously through its social and cosmological dimensions—one rooted in communication with natural forces. The survival tradition invites reflection on what it might offer to contemporary thinking about ecological futures.

Whether in offerings made to ancestors or whispered words spoken before a grave, ritual presentations directed to the dead in Confucian practice are often accompanied by vocal addresses. This paper examines the practice of speaking to the dead in Confucian ritual, epitomized by the closing invocation “尚飨 (shàng xiǎng),” focusing on how such speech sustains what the Analects calls “offering as if [they were] present,” hereby reinforcing the relational and moral practice that constitutes Confucian social life. Drawing on autoethnography, classical texts, and small-scale ethnographic research, and engaging Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual’s performative logic alongside Thomas Csordas’s theory of embodiment, this paper argues that spoken address as embodied action does not merely confirm relational obligations between the living and non-living beings—it actively constructs the emotional and relational reality of ongoing connection, producing a felt sense of presence for absent subjects, and builds a future that includes the non-living.

This paper examines Buddhist Dragon King rainmaking rituals in China as a ritual response to ecological crisis. Drawing on Huayan Buddhist philosophy—particularly Fazang’s doctrine of Dependent Arising in the Dharmadhātu—it argues that these rituals embody a relational cosmology in which humans, natural forces, and spiritual beings participate in an interconnected ecological network. Combining textual analysis, historical research, and ethnographic observation, the study explores both scriptural rainmaking traditions and a contemporary ritual performed during a drought in northern China in 2023. Engaging ritual theory from Catherine Bell and Victor Turner, the paper interprets rainmaking rituals not simply as petitions for rainfall but as communal practices that cultivate ecological awareness, solidarity, and ethical responsibility toward the natural world. In light of the 2026 AAR Presidential Theme “Future,” the paper suggests that Buddhist ritual traditions offer important resources for reimagining ecological relationships and developing religious responses to the global climate crisis.

Across the world’s expanding road networks, millions of animals are killed by vehicles each year. Despite its scale and visibility, roadkill is widely normalized as an inevitable byproduct of modern transportation infrastructure rather than examined as an ethical or religious problem. This paper asks whether Buddhist ritual traditions offer resources for transforming how humans perceive and respond to roadkill in the ecological conditions of the Anthropocene. Drawing on ritual theory—particularly Catherine Bell’s understanding of ritual as a practice that reshapes perception and social relations—alongside Buddhist cosmology and road ecology, the paper argues that roadkill should be understood not merely as an infrastructural accident but as a form of everyday ecological violence. Examining Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist practices of animal care—including animal release (fang sheng 放生), chanting rituals, and funerary rites for animals—the paper shows how ritual cultivates attentiveness, mourning, and ethical responsibility toward more-than-human life.

Making talismans, an important tradition in Daoism, involves a series of complex actions during the writing process. The performative characteristics of these actions are central to finalizing the communication with nature and the talisman’s efficacy. I first investigate how Daoist talismanic writing and its associated practices are presented in early medieval Sanhuang texts, and then explore how this tradition was transformed into the later practice of Thunder Rites (leifa 雷法) during the Song dynasty. Drawing on fieldwork, I also consider how Daoist talismanic practices are understood and enacted in contemporary contexts. Building on John Lagerwey’s analysis of the role of Daoist ritual in Chinese society, I argue that making talismans embedded in broader Daoist ritual practice performs efficaciously through its social and cosmological dimensions—one rooted in communication with natural forces. The survival tradition invites reflection on what it might offer to contemporary thinking about ecological futures.

Whether in offerings made to ancestors or whispered words spoken before a grave, ritual presentations directed to the dead in Confucian practice are often accompanied by vocal addresses. This paper examines the practice of speaking to the dead in Confucian ritual, epitomized by the closing invocation “尚飨 (shàng xiǎng),” focusing on how such speech sustains what the Analects calls “offering as if [they were] present,” hereby reinforcing the relational and moral practice that constitutes Confucian social life. Drawing on autoethnography, classical texts, and small-scale ethnographic research, and engaging Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual’s performative logic alongside Thomas Csordas’s theory of embodiment, this paper argues that spoken address as embodied action does not merely confirm relational obligations between the living and non-living beings—it actively constructs the emotional and relational reality of ongoing connection, producing a felt sense of presence for absent subjects, and builds a future that includes the non-living.

This paper examines the intervention of the Scythian monks in the early sixth century as part of the ongoing reception of the Council of Chalcedon (451). In the decades following the council, the meaning of its Christological definition remained contested across the eastern Mediterranean. The Scythian monks, associated with Abbot Maxentius, entered these debates through their defense of the theopaschite formula, “one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.” They argued that this language did not introduce a doctrinal innovation but clarified the implications of Chalcedonian Christology and protected the unity of Christ’s person. By examining the monks’ writings and appeals to ecclesiastical authorities, this paper situates their intervention within the broader process through which Chalcedon’s meaning continued to be interpreted and debated in the sixth century. The episode highlights how actors from frontier monastic communities participated in shaping the reception of conciliar doctrine in Late Antiquity.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used for historical and theological inquiry, yet their reliability in specialized scholarly domains remains unexamined. This paper presents a systematic empirical evaluation of LLM accuracy in early Christian studies, using two fourth-century figures as case studies: Macrina the Younger (c. 327-379 CE) and Olympias of Constantinople (c. 368-408 CE). These figures were selected to probe LLM behavior across axes of scholarly versus popular reception, source type, and gender representation. Using a structured benchmarking methodology - testing biographical accuracy, chronological precision, theological positioning, and source-critical reasoning across multiple models - we aim to identify consistent failure patterns, including factual conflation, hallucination, and what we term association collapse: the systematic narration of women's significance through male contemporaries. We conclude with practical guidance for educators on integrating critical AI literacy into religious studies pedagogy and a replicable framework for evaluating LLMs in other historical and theological contexts.

In addition to the many and varied critiques of AI, history, and theological writing, one additional concern will be considered in this paper: AI is quite bad at theology and in particular historical theology. Driven by its own and secret means of building symbolic structures and exacerbated by a base training of freely available sources, the result is an idiosyncratic system with little regard for the meaning, relationships, and symbols of Christian history. In a fascinating way it both mimics the Cappadocian critiques of Eunomianism and, at times, even replicates its precise failings.

This paper argues that the Bavli’s derivation of liturgical norms from Hannah’s emotional dysregulation in B. Berakhot 30B-33A offers a tantalizing counterexample to regnant accounts of neurodivergent emotional dysregulation as morally defective. A vast body of literature, popular and academic alike, portrays explicitly or implicitly neurodivergent-coded traits–including differences of emotional intensity, regulation, and focus, as moral defects, a phenomenon this paper calls “moral neuroableism.”  In Berakhot 31A-B, however, Hannah’s emotional dysregulation–her swaying as though drunk in public prayer space, her impassioned and impeccably reasoned confrontation with God, and her sharp and screaming rebukes of ritual authority–as she prays for a child, and later defends his life, is not only tolerated but becomes the source for norms about how all Jews should pray. This paper will compare Hannah’s actions and emotions to stigmatized neurodivergent emotional expressions, and use their normative power within the text to argue for a reevaluation of the moral worth of neurodivergent patterns of mind.

The second paper examines how Jewish interpretations of Moses’s speech difficulty articulate shifting models of disability. Drawing on disability studies and biblical scholarship, it distinguishes between impairment as bodily difference and disability as the social and theological meanings attached to that difference. Reading Exodus alongside rabbinic midrash and medieval biblical commentary, the paper traces how Moses’s description of himself as “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” (Exod 4:10) becomes a recurring problem of interpretation. The biblical narrative responds by restructuring prophetic authority around Moses’s impairment, modeling accommodation rather than cure through designating Aaron as Moses’s mouth. Later interpreters—including Rashi, Rashbam, Bekhor Shor, and Gersonides—reframe Moses’s speech through sociolinguistic, spiritual, and theological explanations that relocate or diminish impairment. This pattern, which the paper terms “disappearing disability,” reveals how rabbinic and medieval interpretations of this passage have negotiated the sometimes-difficult relationship between embodiment and prophetic authority.

This paper offers an analysis of “infertility time,” arguing that infertility’s distinctive forms of temporality shares key features with “crip time.” While recent scholarship in Jewish thought has devoted significant attention to the ethical significance of maternal experience, it has devoted much less attention to infertility. The paper thus argues that taking account of “infertility time” changes the way that experiences of childbearing and childrearing ought to be analyzed and used philosophically. To do this, the paper first analyzes the ways that “infertility time” appears in rabbinic texts, including the Bavli’s discussion of the Mishnah’s ruling that couples who do not have children after ten years together should divorce (B. Yevamot 62a-b). The paper then uses this analysis to re-read recent work in modern Jewish thought on maternal experience.