2025 Annual Meeting - Conference Registration
Conference Registration
Important!
Arizona is on Pacific time for the Conference.
Virtual presenters should use a World Clock Meeting Planner to ensure that time zone differences are correct.
Early Bird Registration ($35-65) Ends Friday March 7, 2025.
Standard Registration ($30-70) Begins Saturday March 8, 2025.
Arizona is on Pacific time for the Conference.
Virtual presenters should use a World Clock Meeting Planner to ensure that time zone differences are correct.
Early Bird Registration ($35-65) Ends Friday March 7, 2025.
Standard Registration ($30-70) Begins Saturday March 8, 2025.
Click to Open Conference Program
President's Message
Welcome to AAR Western Regional Conference 2025 at Arizona State University, The Educational Diamond in the Desert!
Arizona State University is indeed a diamond in Higher Education. It has a way of reshaping fragments of ideas into diamonds. This year as we gather in Tempe AZ, we celebrate and engage in academic religious inquiry to examine the ways religious studies intersects with every aspect of our lives.
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) pursues the study of world religions broadly. The Western Region has chosen for our 2025 theme to lean into the lived experience of the study of religious life. We recognize that religion only comes alive as we live it out. It is a praxeological challenge. Not merely asking, how does religion come alive?, but more importantly how does it make us as humans come alive. We align with Howard Thurman who most profoundly wrote, “don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
So together, we take up the challenge of a conference centered on the diversity of religious expression across time and space and how those religions come alive. Religious expression shapes who we are and what it means to be practitioners within human experience. Faith as praxis and religion as a discipline intersect when innovation molds them into contemporary media, performance, and scholarship. We seek to bring alive these innovations. Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. It is a part of the very air of all of its many campuses.
This year’s conference goal is also to “expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology.” We want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. It is our belief that science and technology have always grown out of the human imagination and the caverns of the possible.
Many years ago, I would call the search for something new spelunking. I took the term, of course, from the notion of cave diving into the depths of unknown places and spaces to retrieve undiscovered gems never seen or experienced before. I invite you all to the intellectual task this year of spelunking to boldly go where you have never gone before with young scholars and senior scholars, alike, as they take us to new frontiers in the study of religion.
We hope to explore strange new practices, to seek out new modalities of inquiry and expressions, to reveal new lived possibilities in a world struggling to engage as civilized nations. Ultimately, we are shaping a new generation of scholarship that goes beyond the classroom or the halls of academe, but that ventures out with expressions of faith that have come alive as a contagion that brings life to desolate hearts and minds.
So come away with us this weekend and spelunk, and just perhaps you will discover something precious and new. Welcome to AAR Western Region 2025 at Arizona State University!
Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs,
Sun Devil BA’96, BA’96, and PhD 2019
Senior Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life &
Pastor of Stanford Memorial Church
Arizona State University is indeed a diamond in Higher Education. It has a way of reshaping fragments of ideas into diamonds. This year as we gather in Tempe AZ, we celebrate and engage in academic religious inquiry to examine the ways religious studies intersects with every aspect of our lives.
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) pursues the study of world religions broadly. The Western Region has chosen for our 2025 theme to lean into the lived experience of the study of religious life. We recognize that religion only comes alive as we live it out. It is a praxeological challenge. Not merely asking, how does religion come alive?, but more importantly how does it make us as humans come alive. We align with Howard Thurman who most profoundly wrote, “don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
So together, we take up the challenge of a conference centered on the diversity of religious expression across time and space and how those religions come alive. Religious expression shapes who we are and what it means to be practitioners within human experience. Faith as praxis and religion as a discipline intersect when innovation molds them into contemporary media, performance, and scholarship. We seek to bring alive these innovations. Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. It is a part of the very air of all of its many campuses.
This year’s conference goal is also to “expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology.” We want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. It is our belief that science and technology have always grown out of the human imagination and the caverns of the possible.
Many years ago, I would call the search for something new spelunking. I took the term, of course, from the notion of cave diving into the depths of unknown places and spaces to retrieve undiscovered gems never seen or experienced before. I invite you all to the intellectual task this year of spelunking to boldly go where you have never gone before with young scholars and senior scholars, alike, as they take us to new frontiers in the study of religion.
We hope to explore strange new practices, to seek out new modalities of inquiry and expressions, to reveal new lived possibilities in a world struggling to engage as civilized nations. Ultimately, we are shaping a new generation of scholarship that goes beyond the classroom or the halls of academe, but that ventures out with expressions of faith that have come alive as a contagion that brings life to desolate hearts and minds.
So come away with us this weekend and spelunk, and just perhaps you will discover something precious and new. Welcome to AAR Western Region 2025 at Arizona State University!
Rev. Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs,
Sun Devil BA’96, BA’96, and PhD 2019
Senior Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life &
Pastor of Stanford Memorial Church
2025 Conference Theme
Performing Religions, Faith, and Spirituality
Roberta Sabbath, Ph.D., President Elect and Program Chair
Religious Studies intersects with every aspect of our lives: political, spiritual, pastoral, creative, performative, and relational. The study of religious life, thought, and practice touches upon our identities, responsibilities, and cultures. It can help us to explore our own selves as we acknowledge the diversity of religious expression across time and space.
The American Academy of Religion-Western Region has always embraced the diversity of such expressivity -- whether through academics, artistry, leadership, or other praxis domains. This year at Arizona State University March 14-16, 2025, we would like to continue in that tradition.
Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. This year, AAR-WR takes inspiration from its location for its 2025 theme, acknowledging both the exciting prospects and serious concerns that the future holds, and broadcasting a vision of hope about new opportunities for appreciating one another as individuals and communities.
Attendees at the 2024 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conference made clear their preference: Expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology. We encourage you to share with us your work relating to the varieties of eclectic, particular, indigenous, diasporic, ancient, and novel religious practices.
Religious expression as interactive and technologically-innovative performance was viscerally realized in 2024 at UNLV in Anna Hennessey’s immersive Re-Birth installation. We hope to build on that by encouraging further performative expressions of faith and joy, such as drumming, call & response, singing, dancing, all of which will be part of a unique session.
We also want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. Science and technology have always grown out of human performance and imagination. Mythology around science, grounded in different religious orientations, continues to fuel innovation and interaction with the novel and unexplored. Science-fiction and fantasy are also part of this vision and its intersections with religious ideation. We invite similar explorations into the future and the unknown.
We encourage you to use contemporary media, performance, and scholarship to share your discoveries with us at ASU in 2025. We encourage you to reach out to other units to co-sponsor and collaborate in developing robust and innovative calls for papers.
We are very excited about our being together at Arizona State University!
The American Academy of Religion-Western Region has always embraced the diversity of such expressivity -- whether through academics, artistry, leadership, or other praxis domains. This year at Arizona State University March 14-16, 2025, we would like to continue in that tradition.
Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. This year, AAR-WR takes inspiration from its location for its 2025 theme, acknowledging both the exciting prospects and serious concerns that the future holds, and broadcasting a vision of hope about new opportunities for appreciating one another as individuals and communities.
Attendees at the 2024 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conference made clear their preference: Expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology. We encourage you to share with us your work relating to the varieties of eclectic, particular, indigenous, diasporic, ancient, and novel religious practices.
Religious expression as interactive and technologically-innovative performance was viscerally realized in 2024 at UNLV in Anna Hennessey’s immersive Re-Birth installation. We hope to build on that by encouraging further performative expressions of faith and joy, such as drumming, call & response, singing, dancing, all of which will be part of a unique session.
We also want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. Science and technology have always grown out of human performance and imagination. Mythology around science, grounded in different religious orientations, continues to fuel innovation and interaction with the novel and unexplored. Science-fiction and fantasy are also part of this vision and its intersections with religious ideation. We invite similar explorations into the future and the unknown.
We encourage you to use contemporary media, performance, and scholarship to share your discoveries with us at ASU in 2025. We encourage you to reach out to other units to co-sponsor and collaborate in developing robust and innovative calls for papers.
We are very excited about our being together at Arizona State University!