CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Last Updated March 2, 2019
March 1-3, 2019
Arizona State University
300 East University Drive
Tempe, AZ 85281
Welcome to Arizona State University!
Dear AAR Members and Colleagues, welcome to Arizona State University for the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Western Region of the American Academy of Religion. This year’s program has admitted nearly 180 papers in 25 Program Units.
The host for the 2019 meeting is Arizona State University. Thank you to Abdullahi Gallab, Souad T. Ali, and multiple department chairs in the graduate departments of Arizona State for your generosity and gracious hospitality. If you see anyone from Arizona State University, be sure to thank them for the time and energy put into ensuring the success of this year’s conference.
Directions to each session have been marked with helpful signs, pointing you to your place of interest. If, for any reason, you are having trouble finding your place of interest, please contact the conference manager – Joseph Paxton – via email, Joseph.Paxton@cst.edu, or via cell phone, (480) 600-3727. A virtual map can be located here. It is requested that text and email be used as primary modes of communication for information, directions, and accommodations. If you are a unit chair, please call directly if you are experiencing technical difficulties and need immediate assistance.
Sunday Afternoon Business Meeting
In preparation for next year, we will hold our annual business meeting Sunday afternoon in Memorial 236 from 12:45 – 2:00 p.m. All attendees are invited to come, and lunch will be provided. We will update members on policy revisions, news, discuss administrative and organization details, and provide preliminary details of the upcoming 2020 conference at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
Saturday and Sunday Afternoon Graduate Student Professional Development
The Graduate Student Professional Development unit is pleased to present two special topics sessions on “Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor.” Graduate students and newly minted PhD’s will have the opportunity to ask questions and hear from the experiences of Jonathan Lee, a tenured faculty member at San Francisco State University, regarding tips, insights, and reflections on the tenure-track job search. Lee has received job offers from multiple institutions and has a history of mentoring graduate and freshly minted PhD’s in and to tenure-track positions.
In addition, the GSPD unit is pleased to present graduate students and new PhD’s with regional professional development and mentoring opportunities. Interested students and new PhD’s who apply will be paired with a regional mentor who will provide guidance and instruction on various topics such as publication, professional development, writing a first book, do’s and don’ts in the academy, scholarly development as a minority scholar, and best practices. To inquire, please email the unit chair joseph.paxton@cst.edu.
Acknowledgements
The American Academy of Religion, Wester Region (AAR/WR) would like to express its thanks to the many people who came together to make this year’s meeting possible. We begin with Arizona State University, which has shown such generosity, not only through sharing its campus, but also by making other appreciated contributions.
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Arizona State University and all members of the Arizona State University community. Special thanks to the following for their generous endorsements:
And thank you to our conference organizers:
On behalf of the board of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region, thank you!
AAR, Western Region Officers
Abdullahi Gallab, President
Jason Sexton, Vice President and Program Chair
Joseph Kim Paxton, Conference Manager
Brian Clearwater, Regional Coordinator
Jonathan H.X. Lee, Past-President
Souad T. Ali, Arizona/Nevada Regional Representative
We also thank all of our presenters, unit chairs, and attendees for supporting the AAR/WR, each other, and the advancement of religious studies in our region.
University Avenue
Rural Road
WESTERN REGION
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION
Annual Meeting
March 1-3, 2019
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
FRIDAY PRE-CONFERENCE, MARCH 1
9:30-Noon Women’s Caucus Event – Coor 3323 – “Resistance to the Distortions of Sexual Power Process Meeting and Contemplative Ritual Against Sexual Harassment in Academia: Towards Perspective, Clarity, and Accountability
You are invited to the Women’s Caucus process meeting to challenge the distortions of perceptions between sexuality and power in Academia. This meeting is a safe space to discuss the power dynamics and power differentials that are generated in an academic setting, and how they impact our interactions in our professional settings. We aim to create awareness of and to prevent the behaviors considered as sexual harassment. We work towards creating an organization that acts accordingly to its professional ethics, with a living and sustained practice that resists the perpetuation of an oppressive climate of denial and privilege. Join the discussion and contemplative ritual to challenge the culture of ambivalence and denial, and the permissive attitudes towards unwanted sexual advances in academia.
If you have felt uncomfortable at someone’s advances, do not dismiss your feelings thinking you have misinterpreted someone’s intentions. Your perception is what matters. Honor it, process it, report it, and be part of the change to hold each other accountable.
The AAR Western Region Women’s Caucus event is gender-inclusive, free and welcomes all people of goodwill to participate in this imperative restorative work.
Registration is available at the door, but RSVP is encouraged and much appreciated. Please RSVP to Yuria Celidwen – celidwen@hotmail.com.
12:00-5:00 AAR-WR Board Meeting – Coor 3301
7:00-9:30 Queer Caucus Event - Queer View 2019 – “Pop! Culture Theologians & Bible Bitches Live at AAR/WR”
Location: Coor 3323
You’re invited to join the Queer Caucus of the AAR/WR for Queer View 2019 featuring an exclusive screening of the LGBTQ film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert followed by a special recording of the new podcast Pop! Culture Theologians featuring pop theologians Martha Cecilia Ovadia and John Erickson with special guests Sara Hof, from the podcast Bible Bitches and Dr. Marie Cartier, Co-Chair of Queer Studies in Religion for AAR/WR and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State University, Northridge.
The Pop! Theologians will break down the classic film with their usual dosage of sass and the event participants will be encouraged to participate in the live Q&A during the recording!
RSVP – queerstudies.aarwr@gmail.com
SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 2
8:00-5:30 Registration – Senita Hall Lobby
First Session (8:30 – 10:00 a.m.)
Asian American Religious Studies 1 (8:30 – 10:00 a.m.) Discovery 130
Narrative and Religion, Race, and Racism
Moderator: Jeongyun April Hur, Claremont School of Theology
Irene Ludji, Claremont Graduate University
“The Schism within Indonesian Migrant Churches
in Southern California and its Ethical Implications”
Albert Shannon Toribio, University of the West
“Buddhism and Classism: The Making of the Social Elite within the American Buddhist Community”
Thien-Huong Ninh, Cuesta College
“Diasporic Crossings: Ethnic and Religious Nationalism among Vietnamese Catholic Refugees in the US and Germany”
Buddhist Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 120
Buddhist Concepts of Bodily Resistance
Moderator: Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brent Beavers, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of Buddhist Studies
“No Self and the Disruption of Transgender Othering in Healthcare”
Matthew Hayes, University of California, Los Angeles
“Ritual Disclosure and the Body: The Sensorium and the Intellect as Sites of Religious Resistance in an Early Modern Shingon Liturgy”
Meijie Shen, Washington University, St. Louis
“Negotiation and Transcendence: The Buddhist Life of a Confucian Woman”
Lu Zhang, University of Arizona
“‘Sages and Worthies as Nirāmaṇakāya應化聖賢’ in Zhiyue Lu指月錄:
The Buddhist Ideals in the Late Ming Chan Hagiography”
Joint Session: Ecology and Religion and Ethics 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Senita C
Book Session – That All May Flourish: Comparative Religious Environmental Ethics
Moderator: Joshua Beckett, Fuller Theological Seminary
Respondent: Joan McGregor, Arizona State University
Laura M. Hartman, Roanoke College
“Contextualizing Flourishing”
Sarah E. Robinson-Bertoni, Santa Clara University
“Interconnected Flourishing for Animals, Landscapes, and People: Eco-halal, the Dao, and Eco-Buddhist Farming in Conversation”
Education and Pedagogy 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 123
Teaching Resistance: Pedagogy and Engaging Resistance
Moderator: TBD
Chelsea Elizabeth Forer, University of Arizona
“The Eye of the Scholar of Religion: A Lens of Resistance”
Sarita Tamayo-Moraga & Olivia Hill, Santa Clara University
“Pedagogical Practices for Working with Emotional Resistance as a Method for Deepening Learning and Cultivating Stability in a First Year Religious Studies Course”
Peter Romaskiewskicz, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Meditation in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Defense for the Practice of a Religious Ritual?”
Goddess Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 246
Breaking Down Barriers: Women, Myth, and Modernity
Moderator: Jan Peppler, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“The Goddess and the Resistance: The #MeToo Movement and a Return to Love”
Angela Sells, Sierra College
“Women and Drums: Percussing Against Myth and Modernity”
Bhavi Bhagat, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Goddess Khodiyar: Trans-caste Positions in the Paradigms of Religious Worship”
History of Christianity 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 301
Christian Resistance Across the Centuries
Moderator: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Andrew Lee, Graduate Theological Union
“Conformity and Resistance: Crafting the Sanctity of Christina of Markyate”
Timothy Sanders, Regent College
“The Rise of Japanese Nationalism and the Christian Response: The Social and Religious Resistance of Uchimura Kanzo in Early Twentieth Century Japan”
Inseo Song, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Martin Luther's View of Religious Resistance: Luther's Letters to Elector John of Saxony and Philip of Hesse in 1529-1530”
Gretchen Saalbach, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Polish Catholic Resistance to Communism”
Islamic Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 150
Resistance, Sufism, and Shi‘i Islam
Moderator: Abdullahi Gallab, Arizona State University
Souad T. Ali, Arizona State University
“Sufi Resistance against British Colonialism in the Sudan”
Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
“Turkish Refugees and Meaning Construction as Resistance”
Muhammed Shareef, Indian Institute of Technology, Palakkad
“Sufism and Resistance: An Enquiry into the Spirit of Resistance in Mystical Cosmology”
Sadeq Ansari, Charles Sturt University
“Sacred Texts Calling for Resistance and the Creedal Texts that Limit it”
Adel Hashemi, McMaster University
“The Transformation of Martyrdom from a Weapon of the Oppressed into a Messianic Symbol of Triumph in Post-Revolution Shi’i Iran”
SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 2
(10:15 – 11:00 a.m.)
Keynote (10:15 – 11:00 a.m.) Senita B
Speaker: Andrew E. Barnes
Title: “Salted by Fire”: African Americans and Racial Resistance in the Minds of African Christians 1880-1920
Abstract: In the wake of European Christian missionary efforts, the first generations of Africans born and raised as Christians appeared at approximately the same time that scientific racism and imperialism began to permeate European Christian thought. African Christians began to discern a racist agenda behind the actions and demands of European missionaries. African Christians did not see European racism as a reason to repudiate Christianity. They also did not see European racism as a reason to give up on Christian civilization. Rather, writing in newly established newspapers that they edited, African Christians began to promote the idea that African Americans provided a better set of Christian role models for Africans than did European missionaries. African Americans had been “salted by fire,” meaning that their faith had resisted the corrosive effects of European American racism, the most virulent form of white racism on earth. Since missionaries could not be trusted to lead the evangelization of Africa, in their newspapers African Christians proposed various strategies for an African-led evangelization of the continent. These strategies all built upon Africans applying in Africa tactics of resistance African Americans had perfected in the United States.
Bio: Andrew E. Barnes attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut where he graduated with honors with a degree in history. He studied for his doctorate at Princeton University. He defended his doctoral thesis on Christian lay devotional life in early modern France in 1983. He taught and received tenure at Carnegie Mellon University in 1993. He left Carnegie Mellon for a position in the history department at Arizona State University in 1996. He was promoted to professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at ASU in 2016. Barnes teaches courses on African, European and Global history with a focus on the history of Christianity. Barnes is the author of three monographs: The Social Dimension of Piety: Associative Life and Religious Change in the Penitent Confraternities of Marseille 1499-1792 (Paulist Press, 1994); Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2009); Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic: Tuskegee, Colonialism and the Shaping of African Industrial Education (Baylor University Press, 2017). He has published more than thirty referred articles and chapters in journals, anthologies and encyclopedia, and presented more than sixty research papers at scholarly conferences. He is presently working on a study of the Phelps Stokes Education Commissions and their impact in Africa.
Second Session (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.)
Ethics 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 350
Ethics of Resistance
Moderator: Owen Anderson, Arizona State University
Nick Scott-Blakely, Fuller Theological Seminary
“The Challenge of Anti-Judaism within Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethic of Resistance”
Kelly Fitzsimmons Burton, Paradise Valley Community College
“The Good as Resistance to Secular Individualism and Collectivism”
Guillermo Garcia, Mount Saint Mary’s University
“Forgiveness as Resistance?”
Graduate Student Professional Development 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 150
Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor
Presenter: Jonathan Lee, San Francisco State University
Jonathan Lee is an active mentor in the American Academy of Religion’s Mentor Program. He has successfully mentored graduate students and freshly minted PhDs in their job search. Lee will share his "insider" experience in the job search process based on his own successes, lessons learned, and experiences from being on hiring committees and an AAR mentor since 2016. It is never too early to prepare for the job search, so start today by attending this session.
Indigenous Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 120
Indigenous Self-Identifications as Resistance
Moderator: Cecilia Titizano, Graduate Theological Union
Andrea McComb Sanchez, University of Arizona
“‘We Have Both Church and Kiva’: Pueblo Indian Catholicism and Colonial Resistance”
Yanitsa Buendia de Llaca, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Being Mexican, Brown, neo-Aztec. Resisting Racial Categories Through Dance and Religion”
Yuria Celidwen, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“Women Weavers of Worlds: Earth-based Mythopoesis in Restorative Indigenous Narratives”
Alec Sixta, California State University, Long Beach
“Healing, Resistance, and the Native American Church”
Nineteenth Century 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 181
Going Rogue: Movements Against the Christian Establishment in Nineteenth Century America
Moderator: Christina Littlefield, Pepperdine University
Della Campion, University of California, Davis
“Sex, Religion and Utopia: Women’s Parity at Oneida”
Elizabeth Lowry, Arizona State University
“‘Faith, Facts, and Frauds’: Emma Hardinge Britten’s Grievances Against the Nineteenth-Century Christian Establishment”
W. Scott Jackson, Arizona State University and Snow College
“Seek Ye Out of the Best Books: How Joseph Smith’s Translation Process of the Book of Mormon Suggests His Syncretic Thought Process”
Pagan Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 246
Rites of Volume: Music, Nakedness, and Activism in Contemporary Paganism
Moderator: TBD
Dorothea Kahena Viale, CalPoly Pomona
“Translating Neo-Pagan Love for Mother Earth into Real Live Political Action”
Michelle Mueller, Santa Clara University
“Ritual Nudity in Modern Witchcraft”
Christopher W. Chase, Iowa State University
“‘¡Levante Kulkulkan!’: Paganism in Mexican Heritage and Heavy Metal Music”
Respondent: Candace Kant, Cherry Hill Seminary
Philosophy of Religion 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 113
Self-Deception, Authentic Selfhood, and Communal Recognition
Moderator: Olga Louchakova-Schwartz, Jesuit School of Theology
Dylan Bailey, Fordham University
“Christianity, Selfhood, and Communal Recognition: A Kierkegaardian Account”
Mohammad Asgary, University of Toronto
“The End of Resistance; Asceticism and Spiritual Struggle in The Shi’ī Philosophical and Spiritual Tradition”
Muhammad Faruque, Fordham University
“A: Finding One’s Authentic Self in a Secular Age: Consciousness, Self-Knowledge and the First-Person Stance in Later Islamic Philosophy”
Zayin Cabot, California State University, East Bay
“Shamans, Talismans, Madness, and Philosophia of Religions”
Psychology, Culture, and Religion 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Senita C
Prejudice, Persecution, and Coping: Global Perspectives on the value of Religion as Resistance?
Moderator: Casey Crosbie, Claremont Graduate University
Bullus Gago, Claremont School of Theology
“Nigerian Christians Resisting Boko Haram”
Katherine Kunz, University of Basel
“The Interview as a Site of Resistance”
Jem Jebbia, Stanford University
“#TacoTrucksatEveryMosque: Resisting Identity Boundaries and Redefining Solidarity”
Wildcard Session 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 301
Moderator: David M. Houghton, Fuller Theological Seminary
Eugene Clay, Arizona State University
“Russian Prophet of Resistance: Maksim Rudometkin in Monastic Confinement, 1858-1877”
Chris Schelin, Starr King School of Ministry
“All May Prophesy One by One: The Politics of Scriptural Interpretation in Two 17th-Century New England Baptist Churches”
Olivia Happel, Pacific Graduate Institute
“Protestant Homer and Catholic Virgil: 'Fake News' in the Renaissance”
Womanist/Pan-African Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 123
Pan-African Session
Moderator: Sakena Young-Scaggs, Arizona State University
Ebony Janice Moore, Graduate Theological Union
“Black Women, Conjure, and Justice-Making Movement”
Moses Moore, Arizona State University
“Religion and Resistance: Edward Blyden’s Mediation of Modernity and Scientific Study of Religion”
Leslye M. Huff, Pacific School of Religion
“Resist Religious Imperialism: In the Beginning Was the Womb”
Sean McClure, Wake Forest Divinity School
“Swinging Sankofa: Race, Space, and the Sacred Repertoire of Duke Ellington”
Lunch (1:00 – 2:00 p.m.)
Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Unit Chairs Meeting and Lunch (Senita C)
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Queer Caucus Lunch (Discovery 246)
Third Session (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.)
Catholic Studies 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 181
Moderator: Eva Braunstein, University of California, Santa Barbara and Justin Claravall, Graduate Theological Union
Alexandra Griffin, Arizona State University
“Patrick F. Healy, S.J. and Depictions of Race in the Catholic Church”
Quitterie Gounot, Cornell University
“Better Death than Sin? Resisting the Narrative of Rape as a Crime Against Chastity”
Alexander Grudem, Veritas Preparatory Academy
“Russell Kirk and the Moral Imagination: A Catholic Rejection of Americanism”
Martha Patricia Ballenas Loayza, Queen’s University, Kingston-Ontario
“The Religious-Conscientious Exemption as a Guarantee of Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion”
Islamic Studies 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 246
Resistance and Muslim Women
Moderator: Souad T. Ali, Arizona State Univeristy
Bethany Elias Jenner, Arizona State University
“About Face: Changing Attitudes toward the Cadar in Indonesia”
Sara Almalla, California State University, Northridge
“Diasporic Experiences of American Muslim Women in Post-Secondary Institutions: Understanding Methods of Resistance and the Construction of Space”
Anna Capati, Independent Scholar
“Conversion as Resistance: Psychological Theories, National Identity, and Family and Social Structures Among Filipina Converts”
Sana Tayyen, University of Redlands
“Analyzing Muslim Female Narratives: From Piety to Empowerment”
Philosophy of Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 113
Resistance and Liberty
Moderator: Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
Courtney Kane, Loyola Marymount University
“Negative and Positive Liberty: A Restatement?”
CP Hertogh, Chongqing University
“I Have a Dream – On the Deductive Force of Logic in Politics”
William A. B. Parkhurst, University of South Florida
“The Autopsy of Faith: An Explicit Structure of Anti-Epistemic ‘Belief’”
Religion in America 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 350
Resistance and Complicity in American Religions
Moderator: Cristina Rosetti, University of California, Riverside
Stephanie Griswold, Independent Scholar
“Women Wishing for Zion: Constructions of Womanhood as Modes of Resistance and Obedience in the FLDS”
Karin Zirk, San Diego Community College
“Rainbow Gatherings: Prayer as Political Resistance”
Terry Shoemaker and Morgan Kaus, Arizona State University
“Political and Religious Rehabituation: Emerging Christianities, Complicity and Resistance”
D. Joseph Torres, University of California, Davis
“Eggshell Churches: An Ethnographic Exploration of Whiteness in Progressive Evangelicalism”
Religion and the Arts 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 120
Situating “Resistance” within the Study of Religious Aesthetics
Moderator: Roy Whitaker, San Diego State University and Tamisha Tyler, Fuller Theological Seminary
Carly Lynch, Santa Clara University
“Crafting a Spiritual Pedagogy for Pain: Fiber Arts and the Resistance of Quick Fixes”
Chase Way, Claremont Graduate University
“Liberty University: Religion, Resistance, and Artistic Activism in Ur-Fascist America”
Dwight Radcliff, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Kendrick’s Pulitzer: Co-opted Artistic & Religious Resistance”
Gamini Sethi, University of Arizona
“Reimagining Religious Objects in the Postcolonial World”
Religions of Asia 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 301
Resistance, Minority Rites, and Nationalism in South Asian Traditions
Moderator: TBD
Alicia Gonzales, California Institute of Integral Studies
“Yoga, Nationalism, and Biopolitical Resistance: Understanding the Resurgence of Hatha Yoga During India’s Independence Movement”
Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University
“Bhakti as a Mode of Waging Resistance: Transforming Self and Social Relations”
Michael Reading, Claremont School of Theology
“Jain ‘Vinaya’ in the Daśavaikālika Sutra: Resisting Pride through Humility and Obeisance”
Religion and Social Sciences 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 123
Social Science Perspectives on Religion and Resistance
Moderator: Rebecca Sager, Loyola Marymount University
Cari Myers, Pepperdine University
“Resistance Narratives: The Religious and Spiritual Development of Evangelical Youth”
Valentina Cantori, University of Southern California
“You Can be Muslim without Knowing It!”: Cultures of Bridging in American Civic Life
Sue Bee Kim, Independent Scholar
“Incommensurability, Agonism, and Antagonism in Pluralistic Democratic Discourse: A Mouffian Framework”
Women and Religion 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Senita C
Models of Resistance – A Study in Praxis
Moderator: Sara Frykenberg, Mount Saint Mary’s University
Brett J. Esaki, University of Arizona
“Grace Lee Boggs: Spiritual Role Model of Multiracial Resistance”
Nan Cano, Immaculate Heart Community of California
“Immaculate Heart Women: Courageous Resistance”
Mahjabeen Dhala, Graduate Theological Union,
“Fatima, Resisting Prejudice, Breaking Norms: Understanding Muslim Women’s Agency Through Religiosity”
Marilyn Batchelor, Claremont Graduate University
“Pauli Murray and African American Women in Religious Resistance”
Fourth Session (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.)
Buddhist Studies 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Senita C
Buddhist Resistance Movements 1
Moderator: Alison Jameson, University of Arizona
Thomas Calobrisi, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of Buddhist Studies
“Locating ‘Resistance’: The Figure of the Dissident Buddha in the Writings of Eugène Burnouf and the American Transcendentalists in the Nineteenth Century”
Zhuo Li, University of Arizona
“Thunder Peak Pagoda: A Women’s Resistance Power is in the Suppression”
Douglas Ober, University of British Columbia
“The Mongoose and the Snake: Conversion, Caste and Bahujan Buddhists, 1890 – 1956”
Ecology and Religion 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 113
Critical Ecological Imaginaries: Scripture, History, Agency, Identity
Moderator: Sarah E. Robinson-Bertoni, Santa Clara University
Matthew R. Hartman, Graduate Theological Union
“Discovering Identity and Environment: Theology, Race, and the Doctrine of Discovery”
Wendy Wiseman, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Going Rogue?: Apocalyptic Imagination, Climate Change, and the Spur to Action”
History of Christianity 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 123
Roundtable Discussion of Dyron Daughrity, Martin Luther: A Biography for the People
Moderator: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Panelists: Karen Carter, Brigham Young University
Inseo Song, Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Elizabeth Marvel, Baylor University
Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Islamic Studies 3 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 150
American Muslims and Resistance
Moderator: Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
Tyler Irvin, California State University, Long Beach
“The Eagle Resists America: How a UFC Champion Uses Islam to Challenge Western Ideals”
Ahmed Uddin, UCL Institute of Education
“Jihad in the Americas: How Islam Inspired Muslims through the Centuries to Resist Oppression”
Ken Chitwood, University of Florida
“The Multiple Valences of Puerto Rican Muslim Resistance: A Critical Muslim Cosmopolitanism from the Margins”
Esra Tunc, University of California, Santa Barbara
“American Muslims’ Economic Practices: The Construction and the Operation of the Mosques”
Latina, Latino, and Latin American Religion 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 181
Latinx Religion and Resistance
Moderator: Daisy Vargas, University of Arizona
Respondent: Matthew P. Casey, Arizona State University
Lloyd Barba and Tatyana Castillo-Ramos, Amherst College
“Sacred Resistance: The New Faces of the Sanctuary Movement”
Lillie Falco-Adkins, California Institute of Integral Studies
“The Body as Religious Resistance in Brujeria and Curanderismo”
Psychology, Culture, and Religion 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 120
Special Panel on Psychology, Religion and Miscarriage
Moderator: Joseph Kim Paxton, Claremont School of Theology
Hester Oberman, University of Arizona
“Contextualizing Miscarriage and Abortion: A Historical, Biomedical, and Religious/Spiritual Perspective”
Joseph Kim Paxton, Claremont School of Theology, and Carly Jane Lee, Independent Scholar
“Constructing Spiritually-Integrative Models of Care for Miscarriage”
Yuria Celidwen, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“Day of the Dead: Loss, Healing and the Rituals of Love for Miscarriage”
Womanist/Pan-African Studies 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 246
Moderator: Valerie Miles-Tribble, American Baptist Seminary of the West
Ronne Wingate Sims, McCormick Theological Seminary
“Trauma Informed Pastoral Care as Womanist Praxis”
Erika D. Gault, Arizona State University
“It’s Complicated: Jackie Hill Perry and the Complex Notion of Sexual Freedom Among Christian Black Millennials”
Keyona Saquile Lazenby, Pacific School of Religion
“Liberation Within”
Michele E. Watkins, University of San Diego
“Differentiation as Disfigurement: A Womanist Polemic on the Co-option of the Divine Essence”
Wildcard Session 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 301
Resisting ‘Religion’: Explorative Session on Worldview Studies
Moderator: Nathan Fredrickson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Elana Jefferson-Tatum, Tufts University
“Beyond Resistance: Africana Knowledge Systems and the Re-Imagination of Religion”
James Edmonds, Arizona State University
“(Re)enchanting Religion: Indonesian Uses of Universal Definitions”
Konden Smith, Arizona State University
“Marketing the Meaning of America: Redefining ‘Religion’ at the NY World's Fair, 1964-1965”
Lilith Acadia, University of California, Berkeley
“Fictive Faith: Science Fiction Constructions as Religions or Worldviews”
Womanist and Black Caucus Planning Collaborative (5:45 – 6:45 p.m.) Memorial 246 (Coconino)
Swinging Sankofa: Black Music of Resistance
Moderator: Sakena Young Skaggs, Arizona State University
Speaker: “TBD”
Reception (5:45 – 6:45 p.m.) Senita B
*All conference attendees are invited. We hope to see you there!
Presidential Address (7:00 – 8:00 p.m.) Senita C
Speaker: Abdullahi Gallab, Arizona State University
Title: Adrift in the Regions of Days and Nights: Thirty Years as a Gentile; Is Religion the
Problem?
Bio: Dr. Abdullahi Gallab serves as the current president of the American Academy of Religion Western Region. He brings to his research and teaching the unique perspectives of a scholar and a former journalist practicing in Sudan. His 2008 book "The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan" is the story of the social world of Islamism. Based on extensive field work inside and outside the Sudanese Islamist regime that came to power through a military coup in 1989, the book provides an entry point into its local and global worlds as they interact and collide with each other.
His 2011 book "A Civil Society Deferred: The Tertiary Grip of Violence in the Sudan" is a critical inquiry into the colonial and post-colonial states as they developed in the Sudan and their relationship to violence. Gallab's 2013 book "Their Second Republic: Islamism in the Sudan from Disintegration to Oblivion" is a continuation of the study of Islamism in power in the Sudan. In 2018, Gallab published “Hasan al-Turabi, the Last of the Islamists: The Man and His Times 1932-2016," a project in the study of a Sudanese human experience at the heart of which Hasan al-Turabi was an actor, a victim and a victimizer.
Professor Gallab is former editor and current publisher of the Sudan Studies Association of North America’s bulletin and was conference host of the SSA 2012 conference, held at ASU. He was president of the organization from 2013-2015. Gallab also serves as co-chair of Islamic Studies for the American Academy of Religion Western Region and is a board member for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
At ASU, Professor Gallab serves as a member of the Barrett Honors faculty and on the advisory board for the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 3
8:00-9:00 Women’s Caucus Breakfast – (Memorial 246)
8:00-9:15 Registration – Memorial Hall Lobby
First Session (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.)
Education and Pedagogy 2 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 225
The Ethics of Anger
Moderator: TBD
Elizabeth Ingenthron, Independent Scholar
“Teaching American Religion and Race in Pursuit of Justice”
Roy Whitaker, San Diego State University
“‘The Finger of God is Here!’: Researching and Teaching Digital Humanities
—Hip Hop Technologies—From an African American Humanist Perspective of Resistance”
Philip Boo Riley, Santa Clara University
“Community Based Learning in Homeless Encampments: Engaging Varieties of Resistance”
Melissa James, Independent Scholar
“Teaching Resistance: Privilege or Imperative? Emotional Labor, Risk, and Teaching Resistance”
History of Christianity 3 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 236
Christian Resistance in America
Moderator: David Houghton, Fuller Theological Seminary
James Berry, Claremont Graduate University
“12 Days in the Schools of Russia: Moral Panic, Anxiety, and the Roots of Counter-cultural Resistance”
Kristy Slominski, University of Arizona
“Early Christian Sex Educators as Countercultural Agents”
Melisa Berry, Azusa Pacific University
“Matriarchal Resistance: Fundamentalist Women vs. the Board of Elders”
Matt Millsap, Baylor University
“Between Courthouse and Lynching”
Islamic Studies 4 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 226
Resistance and Global Islam
Moderator: Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
Mohammad Mazhari, Mehr News Agency
“The Spread of Islam and Tribal Resistance”
Haydyn Campmier, Claremont Theological Union
“Hamas, Religious Identity, and Resistance”
Agnès Kefeli, Arizona State University
“Re-Enchantment as Resistance in Post-Soviet Tatar Literature (1980s-2010s)”
Jewish Studies 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 224
Moderator: Tim Langille, Arizona State University
Stanley Mirvis, Arizona State University
“Crypto-Jewish and Jewish Martyrdom in the Early Modern Period”
Victoria Marks, University of California, Los Angeles
“Dancing Inter-connection”
Shelley Dennis, Rio Salado College
“Inscribed in the Heart: A Jewish Counter(cultural)-Apocalypse for the Anthropocene”
Religions of Asia 2 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 246
Resistance through Ritual, Language, and Tomb Inscription
Moderator: Anna Hennessey, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley
Tyler Feezell, Arizona State University
“Ritual and Resistance: Shangqing Daoist Female Ordination and Political Authority in the Northern Song Dynasty Imperial Court”
Yang Wu, Arizona State University
“Heavenly Relative and Earthly Affection: The Ritual Construction of Master-disciple Relations in the Early Medieval Daoist Community”
Beverly Zhang, Arizona State University
“Resistance and Tomb Inscriptions”
Religion, Literature, and Film 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 242A
Resistant Art Imagines Life?
Moderator: TBD
Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
“Sartre’s The Wall, Buddhist Meditation, and Internal Resistance Against the ‘Self’”
Tara Flanagan, Maria College
“The Ethics of Desire: Questioning the Use of Grotesque Physical and Religious Imagery in Visual Media”
Jon R. Stone, California State University, Long Beach
“‘Resistance Is Futile’: Subverting Prophetic Determinism in Science Fiction Films”
Religion, Science, and Technology 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 242B
Religion, Science, Technology and Resistance
Moderator: Marianne Delaporte and Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University
Roberto Ranieri, University for Philosophical Research
“The Hero with a Thousand Facebook”
Megan A. Leverage, Northern Arizona University
“‘Ethnic Group’ and Resistance to Racial Pseudoscience in the Modern Skeptical Movement, Secular Humanism, New Atheism, and Black Humanism”
Melanie Dzugan, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Do Christians Resist the Alleviation of Suffering? Technology, Niebuhr, and the Political Significance of Suffering”
Second Session (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.)
Buddhist Studies 3 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 242A
Buddhist Resistance Movements, Part II
Moderator: Alison Jameson, University of Arizona; Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
Alina Pokhrel, University of California, Riverside
“The Transmission of Dhammā and Resistance to Religion: Is Vipassanā Meditation Buddhist?”
Steven Quach, University of California, Riverside
“Buddhist Meditation as Resistance: When Doing Nothing is Doing Something”
Sangseraima Ujeed, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Tracing the Footsteps of the Red Hats in Inner Mongolia”
Junfu Wong, University of Cambridge
“Breaking through the Secular Sufferings: Lay Buddhist Views and Forms of Detachment in Resistance to Political and Societal Upheaval in Medieval China (CE 386-584)”
Ethics 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 224
Contemporary Ethical Challenges
Moderator: Joshua Beckett, Fuller Theological Seminary
I Sil Yoon, Graduate Theological Union
“Theologically-Informed Restorative Justice: Resistance and Transformative Power for Human Rights Protections of Trafficked Stateless Women”
Blayne Roach, University of Arizona
“Spiritual Needs for Terminally Ill Patients: Exercising Religious-Based Care in Palliative Treatment”
Owen Anderson, Arizona State University
“How Studying the Humanities Can Address Ethical Challenges”
Graduate Student Professional Development 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 225
Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor
Presenter: Jonathan Lee, San Francisco State University
Jonathan Lee is an active mentor in the American Academy of Religion’s Mentor Program. He has successfully mentored graduate students and freshly minted PhDs in their job search. Lee will share his "insider" experience in the job search process based on his own successes, lessons learned, and experiences from being on hiring committees and an AAR mentor since 2016. It is never too early to prepare for the job search, so start today by attending this session.
Jewish Studies 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 236
Moderator: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Tim Langille, Arizona State University
“To Resist or Not Resist? Different Responses to Cultural Trauma in Maccabees Daniel, and Josephus”
Françoise Mirguet, Arizona State University
“Compassion in Judeo-Hellenistic Literature: An Expression of Resistance against Imperial Propaganda”
Alexander Warren Marcus, Stanford University
“‘The Turning and Revolution of the Pieces of the Die’: Conceptualizing Fate in the Sasanian Empire”
Margot Mink Colbert, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Themes of Social Justice in the Choreography of Jewish Choreographers: Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, Wm. Bales”
Religion in America 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 242B
Unintended Tolerance: Dissent and Localism in Vast Early America
Moderator: Peter Van Cleave, Arizona State University
W. Scott Jackson, Arizona State University & Snow College
“The Process of Sanctification: A Bourdieusian Approach to the Declension of Power in New England Puritan Clergy”
Philip Robertson, Arizona State University & ASU Preparatory Academy
“Anti-Catholic Sentiment in the American Dutch Colonies”
Ingrid Sorensen, Arizona State University
“Conscience in Salem: An Examination of (In)Tolerance during the Witch Trials”
Queer Studies 1 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 246
Desert, Art, and Activism: Identity, Sexuality, and Performance
Moderator: Marie Cartier, California State, Northridge; University of California, Irvine
Justin Sabia-Tanis, Pima Community College
“Queering the Three Graces: Delmas Howe and Cowboys in the Desert”
John Erickson & Martha Cecila Ovadia, Claremont Graduate University
“Pop! Culture Theologians: Activism, Culture, and Post-Academia Life”
Lunch (12:30 – 2:00 p.m.)
Lunch
12:45 – 2:00 p.m. – Business Meeting, Memorial 236
*All members of the AAR/WR are welcome to attend. Lunch is provided for the first 40 attendees.
Third Session (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.)
Goddess Studies 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 242B
Moderator: Jan Peppler, Pacifica Graduate Institute; Angela Sells, Sierra College
D'vorah J. Grenn, Napa Valley College
“Looking Beyond the Disrobing: Humanizing and Immortalizing Draupadi Today”
David Gowey, Arizona State University
“Change Me to a Chieftain”: Resistance and Persistence in Upland Panay
Island”
Shari Tarbet, Dine College
“Remembering, Recovering, and Reclaiming: How Priestesses in the Old Testament resisted Monotheism”
Ecology and Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 242A
Religious Environmental Philosophies and Pedagogies
Moderator: Matthew R. Hartman, Graduate Theological Union
Gordon Gilmore, Graduate Theological Union
“Flourishing Forms or Concretized Preconceptions?: Developing a Theoanthropic Epistemology for Living as a Member of Creation’s Community”
Gregory L. Hoenes, Claremont School of Theology
“Raising Our Children Differently: Toward an Ecological Civilization”
Philosophy of Religion 3 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 224
Resistance, Skeptical Theism, and Becoming a Self [Wildcard Session]
Moderator: Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
Christopher Morales, University of California, Santa Barbara,
“Facing Resistance and Becoming Who One Is: The Ethics of Agonistic Friendship in Emerson and Nietzsche”
Stephen Quarles, Graduate Theological Union
“Resistance is Futile (Or, at least, It is that Way)”
Jeremy Brandt, University of Houston
“Skeptical Theism and the Scope of our Moral Horizons”
Camille Angel, University of San Francisco
“Queering Religion: Field Notes from a Catholic University”
Religions of Asia 3 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 226
Waging Resistance through Learning and Spirituality of the Self
Moderator: Michael Reading, Claremont School of Theology
Ha Yeon Shin, University of Arizona
“A Common Cause, a Common Enemy: The Resistance of Eastern Learning and Christianity in the late 19thand early 20thcentury in Korea”
Amelia Madueño, Doctoral Student, Arizona State University
“Revisiting Aum Shinrikyoō: The Role of Biased Language in the Rise of an “Anti-cult” Movement in Contemporary Japan”
Euiwan Cho, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Resisting Against Restless Protestant Religious Consumers in the Korean Burnout Society: Examining the Rising Interest of Desert Spirituality in the Korean Protestantism”
Patrick Yi Sang Chan, Fuller Theological Seminary
“How Churches in Hong Kong Respond to the Umbrella Movement”
Women and Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 236
Negotiating Power in Narrative and Resistance Movements
Moderator: Sara Frykenberg, Mount Saint Mary’s University
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Whittier College
“Young Adult Fantasy Novels as Sources of Empowerment and Resistance”
Victoria Karalun, Crafton Hills College
“The Red Tent: Re-Ritualization as Resistance to Patriarchal Medicine”
Doe Daughtrey, Arizona State University
“The #MeToo Movement and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
Sophie Barshay, University of Arizona
“’Fatal’ Deviations from Tradition: How the Christian New Right Influences American Conceptions of Family and Gender Roles as Exemplified in 80s and 90s Femme Fatal Movies
Save the Date!
March 13-15, 2020
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, California 91711
Last Updated March 2, 2019
March 1-3, 2019
Arizona State University
300 East University Drive
Tempe, AZ 85281
Welcome to Arizona State University!
Dear AAR Members and Colleagues, welcome to Arizona State University for the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Western Region of the American Academy of Religion. This year’s program has admitted nearly 180 papers in 25 Program Units.
The host for the 2019 meeting is Arizona State University. Thank you to Abdullahi Gallab, Souad T. Ali, and multiple department chairs in the graduate departments of Arizona State for your generosity and gracious hospitality. If you see anyone from Arizona State University, be sure to thank them for the time and energy put into ensuring the success of this year’s conference.
Directions to each session have been marked with helpful signs, pointing you to your place of interest. If, for any reason, you are having trouble finding your place of interest, please contact the conference manager – Joseph Paxton – via email, Joseph.Paxton@cst.edu, or via cell phone, (480) 600-3727. A virtual map can be located here. It is requested that text and email be used as primary modes of communication for information, directions, and accommodations. If you are a unit chair, please call directly if you are experiencing technical difficulties and need immediate assistance.
Sunday Afternoon Business Meeting
In preparation for next year, we will hold our annual business meeting Sunday afternoon in Memorial 236 from 12:45 – 2:00 p.m. All attendees are invited to come, and lunch will be provided. We will update members on policy revisions, news, discuss administrative and organization details, and provide preliminary details of the upcoming 2020 conference at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
Saturday and Sunday Afternoon Graduate Student Professional Development
The Graduate Student Professional Development unit is pleased to present two special topics sessions on “Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor.” Graduate students and newly minted PhD’s will have the opportunity to ask questions and hear from the experiences of Jonathan Lee, a tenured faculty member at San Francisco State University, regarding tips, insights, and reflections on the tenure-track job search. Lee has received job offers from multiple institutions and has a history of mentoring graduate and freshly minted PhD’s in and to tenure-track positions.
In addition, the GSPD unit is pleased to present graduate students and new PhD’s with regional professional development and mentoring opportunities. Interested students and new PhD’s who apply will be paired with a regional mentor who will provide guidance and instruction on various topics such as publication, professional development, writing a first book, do’s and don’ts in the academy, scholarly development as a minority scholar, and best practices. To inquire, please email the unit chair joseph.paxton@cst.edu.
Acknowledgements
The American Academy of Religion, Wester Region (AAR/WR) would like to express its thanks to the many people who came together to make this year’s meeting possible. We begin with Arizona State University, which has shown such generosity, not only through sharing its campus, but also by making other appreciated contributions.
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Arizona State University and all members of the Arizona State University community. Special thanks to the following for their generous endorsements:
- Dr. Patrick Kenney, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Dr. Elizabeth Wentz, Dean of Social Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, Dean of Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Dr. Tracy Fessenden, Interim Director of the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies
- Dr. Bryan Brayboy, Interim Director of the School of Social Transformation
- Dr. John Carlson, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
- Dr. Eugene Clay, Faculty Head of Religious Studies
- Dr. Souad T. Ali, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle East and Islamic Studies and head of Classics and Middle East Letters and Cultures at the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University and the AAR-WR Arizona/Nevada Regional Representative
And thank you to our conference organizers:
- Rachel Bunning, Communication Program Coordinator for the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies
- Tami Kane-McKenzie, Business Operations Manager for the School of Social Transformation
- Carolyn Forbes, Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
- Bethany Elias Jenner, Doctoral Candidate in Religious Studies
On behalf of the board of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region, thank you!
AAR, Western Region Officers
Abdullahi Gallab, President
Jason Sexton, Vice President and Program Chair
Joseph Kim Paxton, Conference Manager
Brian Clearwater, Regional Coordinator
Jonathan H.X. Lee, Past-President
Souad T. Ali, Arizona/Nevada Regional Representative
We also thank all of our presenters, unit chairs, and attendees for supporting the AAR/WR, each other, and the advancement of religious studies in our region.
University Avenue
Rural Road
WESTERN REGION
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION
Annual Meeting
March 1-3, 2019
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
FRIDAY PRE-CONFERENCE, MARCH 1
9:30-Noon Women’s Caucus Event – Coor 3323 – “Resistance to the Distortions of Sexual Power Process Meeting and Contemplative Ritual Against Sexual Harassment in Academia: Towards Perspective, Clarity, and Accountability
You are invited to the Women’s Caucus process meeting to challenge the distortions of perceptions between sexuality and power in Academia. This meeting is a safe space to discuss the power dynamics and power differentials that are generated in an academic setting, and how they impact our interactions in our professional settings. We aim to create awareness of and to prevent the behaviors considered as sexual harassment. We work towards creating an organization that acts accordingly to its professional ethics, with a living and sustained practice that resists the perpetuation of an oppressive climate of denial and privilege. Join the discussion and contemplative ritual to challenge the culture of ambivalence and denial, and the permissive attitudes towards unwanted sexual advances in academia.
If you have felt uncomfortable at someone’s advances, do not dismiss your feelings thinking you have misinterpreted someone’s intentions. Your perception is what matters. Honor it, process it, report it, and be part of the change to hold each other accountable.
The AAR Western Region Women’s Caucus event is gender-inclusive, free and welcomes all people of goodwill to participate in this imperative restorative work.
Registration is available at the door, but RSVP is encouraged and much appreciated. Please RSVP to Yuria Celidwen – celidwen@hotmail.com.
12:00-5:00 AAR-WR Board Meeting – Coor 3301
7:00-9:30 Queer Caucus Event - Queer View 2019 – “Pop! Culture Theologians & Bible Bitches Live at AAR/WR”
Location: Coor 3323
You’re invited to join the Queer Caucus of the AAR/WR for Queer View 2019 featuring an exclusive screening of the LGBTQ film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert followed by a special recording of the new podcast Pop! Culture Theologians featuring pop theologians Martha Cecilia Ovadia and John Erickson with special guests Sara Hof, from the podcast Bible Bitches and Dr. Marie Cartier, Co-Chair of Queer Studies in Religion for AAR/WR and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State University, Northridge.
The Pop! Theologians will break down the classic film with their usual dosage of sass and the event participants will be encouraged to participate in the live Q&A during the recording!
RSVP – queerstudies.aarwr@gmail.com
SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 2
8:00-5:30 Registration – Senita Hall Lobby
First Session (8:30 – 10:00 a.m.)
Asian American Religious Studies 1 (8:30 – 10:00 a.m.) Discovery 130
Narrative and Religion, Race, and Racism
Moderator: Jeongyun April Hur, Claremont School of Theology
Irene Ludji, Claremont Graduate University
“The Schism within Indonesian Migrant Churches
in Southern California and its Ethical Implications”
Albert Shannon Toribio, University of the West
“Buddhism and Classism: The Making of the Social Elite within the American Buddhist Community”
Thien-Huong Ninh, Cuesta College
“Diasporic Crossings: Ethnic and Religious Nationalism among Vietnamese Catholic Refugees in the US and Germany”
Buddhist Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 120
Buddhist Concepts of Bodily Resistance
Moderator: Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brent Beavers, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of Buddhist Studies
“No Self and the Disruption of Transgender Othering in Healthcare”
Matthew Hayes, University of California, Los Angeles
“Ritual Disclosure and the Body: The Sensorium and the Intellect as Sites of Religious Resistance in an Early Modern Shingon Liturgy”
Meijie Shen, Washington University, St. Louis
“Negotiation and Transcendence: The Buddhist Life of a Confucian Woman”
Lu Zhang, University of Arizona
“‘Sages and Worthies as Nirāmaṇakāya應化聖賢’ in Zhiyue Lu指月錄:
The Buddhist Ideals in the Late Ming Chan Hagiography”
Joint Session: Ecology and Religion and Ethics 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Senita C
Book Session – That All May Flourish: Comparative Religious Environmental Ethics
Moderator: Joshua Beckett, Fuller Theological Seminary
Respondent: Joan McGregor, Arizona State University
Laura M. Hartman, Roanoke College
“Contextualizing Flourishing”
Sarah E. Robinson-Bertoni, Santa Clara University
“Interconnected Flourishing for Animals, Landscapes, and People: Eco-halal, the Dao, and Eco-Buddhist Farming in Conversation”
Education and Pedagogy 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 123
Teaching Resistance: Pedagogy and Engaging Resistance
Moderator: TBD
Chelsea Elizabeth Forer, University of Arizona
“The Eye of the Scholar of Religion: A Lens of Resistance”
Sarita Tamayo-Moraga & Olivia Hill, Santa Clara University
“Pedagogical Practices for Working with Emotional Resistance as a Method for Deepening Learning and Cultivating Stability in a First Year Religious Studies Course”
Peter Romaskiewskicz, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Meditation in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Defense for the Practice of a Religious Ritual?”
Goddess Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 246
Breaking Down Barriers: Women, Myth, and Modernity
Moderator: Jan Peppler, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“The Goddess and the Resistance: The #MeToo Movement and a Return to Love”
Angela Sells, Sierra College
“Women and Drums: Percussing Against Myth and Modernity”
Bhavi Bhagat, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Goddess Khodiyar: Trans-caste Positions in the Paradigms of Religious Worship”
History of Christianity 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 301
Christian Resistance Across the Centuries
Moderator: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Andrew Lee, Graduate Theological Union
“Conformity and Resistance: Crafting the Sanctity of Christina of Markyate”
Timothy Sanders, Regent College
“The Rise of Japanese Nationalism and the Christian Response: The Social and Religious Resistance of Uchimura Kanzo in Early Twentieth Century Japan”
Inseo Song, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Martin Luther's View of Religious Resistance: Luther's Letters to Elector John of Saxony and Philip of Hesse in 1529-1530”
Gretchen Saalbach, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Polish Catholic Resistance to Communism”
Islamic Studies 1 (8:30-10:00 a.m.) Discovery 150
Resistance, Sufism, and Shi‘i Islam
Moderator: Abdullahi Gallab, Arizona State University
Souad T. Ali, Arizona State University
“Sufi Resistance against British Colonialism in the Sudan”
Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
“Turkish Refugees and Meaning Construction as Resistance”
Muhammed Shareef, Indian Institute of Technology, Palakkad
“Sufism and Resistance: An Enquiry into the Spirit of Resistance in Mystical Cosmology”
Sadeq Ansari, Charles Sturt University
“Sacred Texts Calling for Resistance and the Creedal Texts that Limit it”
Adel Hashemi, McMaster University
“The Transformation of Martyrdom from a Weapon of the Oppressed into a Messianic Symbol of Triumph in Post-Revolution Shi’i Iran”
SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 2
(10:15 – 11:00 a.m.)
Keynote (10:15 – 11:00 a.m.) Senita B
Speaker: Andrew E. Barnes
Title: “Salted by Fire”: African Americans and Racial Resistance in the Minds of African Christians 1880-1920
Abstract: In the wake of European Christian missionary efforts, the first generations of Africans born and raised as Christians appeared at approximately the same time that scientific racism and imperialism began to permeate European Christian thought. African Christians began to discern a racist agenda behind the actions and demands of European missionaries. African Christians did not see European racism as a reason to repudiate Christianity. They also did not see European racism as a reason to give up on Christian civilization. Rather, writing in newly established newspapers that they edited, African Christians began to promote the idea that African Americans provided a better set of Christian role models for Africans than did European missionaries. African Americans had been “salted by fire,” meaning that their faith had resisted the corrosive effects of European American racism, the most virulent form of white racism on earth. Since missionaries could not be trusted to lead the evangelization of Africa, in their newspapers African Christians proposed various strategies for an African-led evangelization of the continent. These strategies all built upon Africans applying in Africa tactics of resistance African Americans had perfected in the United States.
Bio: Andrew E. Barnes attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut where he graduated with honors with a degree in history. He studied for his doctorate at Princeton University. He defended his doctoral thesis on Christian lay devotional life in early modern France in 1983. He taught and received tenure at Carnegie Mellon University in 1993. He left Carnegie Mellon for a position in the history department at Arizona State University in 1996. He was promoted to professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at ASU in 2016. Barnes teaches courses on African, European and Global history with a focus on the history of Christianity. Barnes is the author of three monographs: The Social Dimension of Piety: Associative Life and Religious Change in the Penitent Confraternities of Marseille 1499-1792 (Paulist Press, 1994); Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2009); Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic: Tuskegee, Colonialism and the Shaping of African Industrial Education (Baylor University Press, 2017). He has published more than thirty referred articles and chapters in journals, anthologies and encyclopedia, and presented more than sixty research papers at scholarly conferences. He is presently working on a study of the Phelps Stokes Education Commissions and their impact in Africa.
Second Session (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.)
Ethics 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 350
Ethics of Resistance
Moderator: Owen Anderson, Arizona State University
Nick Scott-Blakely, Fuller Theological Seminary
“The Challenge of Anti-Judaism within Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethic of Resistance”
Kelly Fitzsimmons Burton, Paradise Valley Community College
“The Good as Resistance to Secular Individualism and Collectivism”
Guillermo Garcia, Mount Saint Mary’s University
“Forgiveness as Resistance?”
Graduate Student Professional Development 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 150
Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor
Presenter: Jonathan Lee, San Francisco State University
Jonathan Lee is an active mentor in the American Academy of Religion’s Mentor Program. He has successfully mentored graduate students and freshly minted PhDs in their job search. Lee will share his "insider" experience in the job search process based on his own successes, lessons learned, and experiences from being on hiring committees and an AAR mentor since 2016. It is never too early to prepare for the job search, so start today by attending this session.
Indigenous Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 120
Indigenous Self-Identifications as Resistance
Moderator: Cecilia Titizano, Graduate Theological Union
Andrea McComb Sanchez, University of Arizona
“‘We Have Both Church and Kiva’: Pueblo Indian Catholicism and Colonial Resistance”
Yanitsa Buendia de Llaca, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Being Mexican, Brown, neo-Aztec. Resisting Racial Categories Through Dance and Religion”
Yuria Celidwen, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“Women Weavers of Worlds: Earth-based Mythopoesis in Restorative Indigenous Narratives”
Alec Sixta, California State University, Long Beach
“Healing, Resistance, and the Native American Church”
Nineteenth Century 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 181
Going Rogue: Movements Against the Christian Establishment in Nineteenth Century America
Moderator: Christina Littlefield, Pepperdine University
Della Campion, University of California, Davis
“Sex, Religion and Utopia: Women’s Parity at Oneida”
Elizabeth Lowry, Arizona State University
“‘Faith, Facts, and Frauds’: Emma Hardinge Britten’s Grievances Against the Nineteenth-Century Christian Establishment”
W. Scott Jackson, Arizona State University and Snow College
“Seek Ye Out of the Best Books: How Joseph Smith’s Translation Process of the Book of Mormon Suggests His Syncretic Thought Process”
Pagan Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 246
Rites of Volume: Music, Nakedness, and Activism in Contemporary Paganism
Moderator: TBD
Dorothea Kahena Viale, CalPoly Pomona
“Translating Neo-Pagan Love for Mother Earth into Real Live Political Action”
Michelle Mueller, Santa Clara University
“Ritual Nudity in Modern Witchcraft”
Christopher W. Chase, Iowa State University
“‘¡Levante Kulkulkan!’: Paganism in Mexican Heritage and Heavy Metal Music”
Respondent: Candace Kant, Cherry Hill Seminary
Philosophy of Religion 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 113
Self-Deception, Authentic Selfhood, and Communal Recognition
Moderator: Olga Louchakova-Schwartz, Jesuit School of Theology
Dylan Bailey, Fordham University
“Christianity, Selfhood, and Communal Recognition: A Kierkegaardian Account”
Mohammad Asgary, University of Toronto
“The End of Resistance; Asceticism and Spiritual Struggle in The Shi’ī Philosophical and Spiritual Tradition”
Muhammad Faruque, Fordham University
“A: Finding One’s Authentic Self in a Secular Age: Consciousness, Self-Knowledge and the First-Person Stance in Later Islamic Philosophy”
Zayin Cabot, California State University, East Bay
“Shamans, Talismans, Madness, and Philosophia of Religions”
Psychology, Culture, and Religion 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Senita C
Prejudice, Persecution, and Coping: Global Perspectives on the value of Religion as Resistance?
Moderator: Casey Crosbie, Claremont Graduate University
Bullus Gago, Claremont School of Theology
“Nigerian Christians Resisting Boko Haram”
Katherine Kunz, University of Basel
“The Interview as a Site of Resistance”
Jem Jebbia, Stanford University
“#TacoTrucksatEveryMosque: Resisting Identity Boundaries and Redefining Solidarity”
Wildcard Session 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 301
Moderator: David M. Houghton, Fuller Theological Seminary
Eugene Clay, Arizona State University
“Russian Prophet of Resistance: Maksim Rudometkin in Monastic Confinement, 1858-1877”
Chris Schelin, Starr King School of Ministry
“All May Prophesy One by One: The Politics of Scriptural Interpretation in Two 17th-Century New England Baptist Churches”
Olivia Happel, Pacific Graduate Institute
“Protestant Homer and Catholic Virgil: 'Fake News' in the Renaissance”
Womanist/Pan-African Studies 1 (11:15 – 12:45 p.m.) Discovery 123
Pan-African Session
Moderator: Sakena Young-Scaggs, Arizona State University
Ebony Janice Moore, Graduate Theological Union
“Black Women, Conjure, and Justice-Making Movement”
Moses Moore, Arizona State University
“Religion and Resistance: Edward Blyden’s Mediation of Modernity and Scientific Study of Religion”
Leslye M. Huff, Pacific School of Religion
“Resist Religious Imperialism: In the Beginning Was the Womb”
Sean McClure, Wake Forest Divinity School
“Swinging Sankofa: Race, Space, and the Sacred Repertoire of Duke Ellington”
Lunch (1:00 – 2:00 p.m.)
Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Unit Chairs Meeting and Lunch (Senita C)
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Queer Caucus Lunch (Discovery 246)
Third Session (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.)
Catholic Studies 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 181
Moderator: Eva Braunstein, University of California, Santa Barbara and Justin Claravall, Graduate Theological Union
Alexandra Griffin, Arizona State University
“Patrick F. Healy, S.J. and Depictions of Race in the Catholic Church”
Quitterie Gounot, Cornell University
“Better Death than Sin? Resisting the Narrative of Rape as a Crime Against Chastity”
Alexander Grudem, Veritas Preparatory Academy
“Russell Kirk and the Moral Imagination: A Catholic Rejection of Americanism”
Martha Patricia Ballenas Loayza, Queen’s University, Kingston-Ontario
“The Religious-Conscientious Exemption as a Guarantee of Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion”
Islamic Studies 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 246
Resistance and Muslim Women
Moderator: Souad T. Ali, Arizona State Univeristy
Bethany Elias Jenner, Arizona State University
“About Face: Changing Attitudes toward the Cadar in Indonesia”
Sara Almalla, California State University, Northridge
“Diasporic Experiences of American Muslim Women in Post-Secondary Institutions: Understanding Methods of Resistance and the Construction of Space”
Anna Capati, Independent Scholar
“Conversion as Resistance: Psychological Theories, National Identity, and Family and Social Structures Among Filipina Converts”
Sana Tayyen, University of Redlands
“Analyzing Muslim Female Narratives: From Piety to Empowerment”
Philosophy of Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 113
Resistance and Liberty
Moderator: Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
Courtney Kane, Loyola Marymount University
“Negative and Positive Liberty: A Restatement?”
CP Hertogh, Chongqing University
“I Have a Dream – On the Deductive Force of Logic in Politics”
William A. B. Parkhurst, University of South Florida
“The Autopsy of Faith: An Explicit Structure of Anti-Epistemic ‘Belief’”
Religion in America 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 350
Resistance and Complicity in American Religions
Moderator: Cristina Rosetti, University of California, Riverside
Stephanie Griswold, Independent Scholar
“Women Wishing for Zion: Constructions of Womanhood as Modes of Resistance and Obedience in the FLDS”
Karin Zirk, San Diego Community College
“Rainbow Gatherings: Prayer as Political Resistance”
Terry Shoemaker and Morgan Kaus, Arizona State University
“Political and Religious Rehabituation: Emerging Christianities, Complicity and Resistance”
D. Joseph Torres, University of California, Davis
“Eggshell Churches: An Ethnographic Exploration of Whiteness in Progressive Evangelicalism”
Religion and the Arts 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 120
Situating “Resistance” within the Study of Religious Aesthetics
Moderator: Roy Whitaker, San Diego State University and Tamisha Tyler, Fuller Theological Seminary
Carly Lynch, Santa Clara University
“Crafting a Spiritual Pedagogy for Pain: Fiber Arts and the Resistance of Quick Fixes”
Chase Way, Claremont Graduate University
“Liberty University: Religion, Resistance, and Artistic Activism in Ur-Fascist America”
Dwight Radcliff, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Kendrick’s Pulitzer: Co-opted Artistic & Religious Resistance”
Gamini Sethi, University of Arizona
“Reimagining Religious Objects in the Postcolonial World”
Religions of Asia 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 301
Resistance, Minority Rites, and Nationalism in South Asian Traditions
Moderator: TBD
Alicia Gonzales, California Institute of Integral Studies
“Yoga, Nationalism, and Biopolitical Resistance: Understanding the Resurgence of Hatha Yoga During India’s Independence Movement”
Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University
“Bhakti as a Mode of Waging Resistance: Transforming Self and Social Relations”
Michael Reading, Claremont School of Theology
“Jain ‘Vinaya’ in the Daśavaikālika Sutra: Resisting Pride through Humility and Obeisance”
Religion and Social Sciences 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Discovery 123
Social Science Perspectives on Religion and Resistance
Moderator: Rebecca Sager, Loyola Marymount University
Cari Myers, Pepperdine University
“Resistance Narratives: The Religious and Spiritual Development of Evangelical Youth”
Valentina Cantori, University of Southern California
“You Can be Muslim without Knowing It!”: Cultures of Bridging in American Civic Life
Sue Bee Kim, Independent Scholar
“Incommensurability, Agonism, and Antagonism in Pluralistic Democratic Discourse: A Mouffian Framework”
Women and Religion 1 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Senita C
Models of Resistance – A Study in Praxis
Moderator: Sara Frykenberg, Mount Saint Mary’s University
Brett J. Esaki, University of Arizona
“Grace Lee Boggs: Spiritual Role Model of Multiracial Resistance”
Nan Cano, Immaculate Heart Community of California
“Immaculate Heart Women: Courageous Resistance”
Mahjabeen Dhala, Graduate Theological Union,
“Fatima, Resisting Prejudice, Breaking Norms: Understanding Muslim Women’s Agency Through Religiosity”
Marilyn Batchelor, Claremont Graduate University
“Pauli Murray and African American Women in Religious Resistance”
Fourth Session (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.)
Buddhist Studies 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Senita C
Buddhist Resistance Movements 1
Moderator: Alison Jameson, University of Arizona
Thomas Calobrisi, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of Buddhist Studies
“Locating ‘Resistance’: The Figure of the Dissident Buddha in the Writings of Eugène Burnouf and the American Transcendentalists in the Nineteenth Century”
Zhuo Li, University of Arizona
“Thunder Peak Pagoda: A Women’s Resistance Power is in the Suppression”
Douglas Ober, University of British Columbia
“The Mongoose and the Snake: Conversion, Caste and Bahujan Buddhists, 1890 – 1956”
Ecology and Religion 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 113
Critical Ecological Imaginaries: Scripture, History, Agency, Identity
Moderator: Sarah E. Robinson-Bertoni, Santa Clara University
Matthew R. Hartman, Graduate Theological Union
“Discovering Identity and Environment: Theology, Race, and the Doctrine of Discovery”
Wendy Wiseman, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Going Rogue?: Apocalyptic Imagination, Climate Change, and the Spur to Action”
History of Christianity 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 123
Roundtable Discussion of Dyron Daughrity, Martin Luther: A Biography for the People
Moderator: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Panelists: Karen Carter, Brigham Young University
Inseo Song, Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Elizabeth Marvel, Baylor University
Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Islamic Studies 3 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 150
American Muslims and Resistance
Moderator: Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
Tyler Irvin, California State University, Long Beach
“The Eagle Resists America: How a UFC Champion Uses Islam to Challenge Western Ideals”
Ahmed Uddin, UCL Institute of Education
“Jihad in the Americas: How Islam Inspired Muslims through the Centuries to Resist Oppression”
Ken Chitwood, University of Florida
“The Multiple Valences of Puerto Rican Muslim Resistance: A Critical Muslim Cosmopolitanism from the Margins”
Esra Tunc, University of California, Santa Barbara
“American Muslims’ Economic Practices: The Construction and the Operation of the Mosques”
Latina, Latino, and Latin American Religion 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 181
Latinx Religion and Resistance
Moderator: Daisy Vargas, University of Arizona
Respondent: Matthew P. Casey, Arizona State University
Lloyd Barba and Tatyana Castillo-Ramos, Amherst College
“Sacred Resistance: The New Faces of the Sanctuary Movement”
Lillie Falco-Adkins, California Institute of Integral Studies
“The Body as Religious Resistance in Brujeria and Curanderismo”
Psychology, Culture, and Religion 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 120
Special Panel on Psychology, Religion and Miscarriage
Moderator: Joseph Kim Paxton, Claremont School of Theology
Hester Oberman, University of Arizona
“Contextualizing Miscarriage and Abortion: A Historical, Biomedical, and Religious/Spiritual Perspective”
Joseph Kim Paxton, Claremont School of Theology, and Carly Jane Lee, Independent Scholar
“Constructing Spiritually-Integrative Models of Care for Miscarriage”
Yuria Celidwen, Pacifica Graduate Institute
“Day of the Dead: Loss, Healing and the Rituals of Love for Miscarriage”
Womanist/Pan-African Studies 2 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 246
Moderator: Valerie Miles-Tribble, American Baptist Seminary of the West
Ronne Wingate Sims, McCormick Theological Seminary
“Trauma Informed Pastoral Care as Womanist Praxis”
Erika D. Gault, Arizona State University
“It’s Complicated: Jackie Hill Perry and the Complex Notion of Sexual Freedom Among Christian Black Millennials”
Keyona Saquile Lazenby, Pacific School of Religion
“Liberation Within”
Michele E. Watkins, University of San Diego
“Differentiation as Disfigurement: A Womanist Polemic on the Co-option of the Divine Essence”
Wildcard Session 1 (4:00 – 5:30 p.m.) Discovery 301
Resisting ‘Religion’: Explorative Session on Worldview Studies
Moderator: Nathan Fredrickson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Elana Jefferson-Tatum, Tufts University
“Beyond Resistance: Africana Knowledge Systems and the Re-Imagination of Religion”
James Edmonds, Arizona State University
“(Re)enchanting Religion: Indonesian Uses of Universal Definitions”
Konden Smith, Arizona State University
“Marketing the Meaning of America: Redefining ‘Religion’ at the NY World's Fair, 1964-1965”
Lilith Acadia, University of California, Berkeley
“Fictive Faith: Science Fiction Constructions as Religions or Worldviews”
Womanist and Black Caucus Planning Collaborative (5:45 – 6:45 p.m.) Memorial 246 (Coconino)
Swinging Sankofa: Black Music of Resistance
Moderator: Sakena Young Skaggs, Arizona State University
Speaker: “TBD”
Reception (5:45 – 6:45 p.m.) Senita B
*All conference attendees are invited. We hope to see you there!
Presidential Address (7:00 – 8:00 p.m.) Senita C
Speaker: Abdullahi Gallab, Arizona State University
Title: Adrift in the Regions of Days and Nights: Thirty Years as a Gentile; Is Religion the
Problem?
Bio: Dr. Abdullahi Gallab serves as the current president of the American Academy of Religion Western Region. He brings to his research and teaching the unique perspectives of a scholar and a former journalist practicing in Sudan. His 2008 book "The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan" is the story of the social world of Islamism. Based on extensive field work inside and outside the Sudanese Islamist regime that came to power through a military coup in 1989, the book provides an entry point into its local and global worlds as they interact and collide with each other.
His 2011 book "A Civil Society Deferred: The Tertiary Grip of Violence in the Sudan" is a critical inquiry into the colonial and post-colonial states as they developed in the Sudan and their relationship to violence. Gallab's 2013 book "Their Second Republic: Islamism in the Sudan from Disintegration to Oblivion" is a continuation of the study of Islamism in power in the Sudan. In 2018, Gallab published “Hasan al-Turabi, the Last of the Islamists: The Man and His Times 1932-2016," a project in the study of a Sudanese human experience at the heart of which Hasan al-Turabi was an actor, a victim and a victimizer.
Professor Gallab is former editor and current publisher of the Sudan Studies Association of North America’s bulletin and was conference host of the SSA 2012 conference, held at ASU. He was president of the organization from 2013-2015. Gallab also serves as co-chair of Islamic Studies for the American Academy of Religion Western Region and is a board member for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
At ASU, Professor Gallab serves as a member of the Barrett Honors faculty and on the advisory board for the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 3
8:00-9:00 Women’s Caucus Breakfast – (Memorial 246)
8:00-9:15 Registration – Memorial Hall Lobby
First Session (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.)
Education and Pedagogy 2 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 225
The Ethics of Anger
Moderator: TBD
Elizabeth Ingenthron, Independent Scholar
“Teaching American Religion and Race in Pursuit of Justice”
Roy Whitaker, San Diego State University
“‘The Finger of God is Here!’: Researching and Teaching Digital Humanities
—Hip Hop Technologies—From an African American Humanist Perspective of Resistance”
Philip Boo Riley, Santa Clara University
“Community Based Learning in Homeless Encampments: Engaging Varieties of Resistance”
Melissa James, Independent Scholar
“Teaching Resistance: Privilege or Imperative? Emotional Labor, Risk, and Teaching Resistance”
History of Christianity 3 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 236
Christian Resistance in America
Moderator: David Houghton, Fuller Theological Seminary
James Berry, Claremont Graduate University
“12 Days in the Schools of Russia: Moral Panic, Anxiety, and the Roots of Counter-cultural Resistance”
Kristy Slominski, University of Arizona
“Early Christian Sex Educators as Countercultural Agents”
Melisa Berry, Azusa Pacific University
“Matriarchal Resistance: Fundamentalist Women vs. the Board of Elders”
Matt Millsap, Baylor University
“Between Courthouse and Lynching”
Islamic Studies 4 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 226
Resistance and Global Islam
Moderator: Sophia Pandya, California State University, Long Beach
Mohammad Mazhari, Mehr News Agency
“The Spread of Islam and Tribal Resistance”
Haydyn Campmier, Claremont Theological Union
“Hamas, Religious Identity, and Resistance”
Agnès Kefeli, Arizona State University
“Re-Enchantment as Resistance in Post-Soviet Tatar Literature (1980s-2010s)”
Jewish Studies 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 224
Moderator: Tim Langille, Arizona State University
Stanley Mirvis, Arizona State University
“Crypto-Jewish and Jewish Martyrdom in the Early Modern Period”
Victoria Marks, University of California, Los Angeles
“Dancing Inter-connection”
Shelley Dennis, Rio Salado College
“Inscribed in the Heart: A Jewish Counter(cultural)-Apocalypse for the Anthropocene”
Religions of Asia 2 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 246
Resistance through Ritual, Language, and Tomb Inscription
Moderator: Anna Hennessey, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley
Tyler Feezell, Arizona State University
“Ritual and Resistance: Shangqing Daoist Female Ordination and Political Authority in the Northern Song Dynasty Imperial Court”
Yang Wu, Arizona State University
“Heavenly Relative and Earthly Affection: The Ritual Construction of Master-disciple Relations in the Early Medieval Daoist Community”
Beverly Zhang, Arizona State University
“Resistance and Tomb Inscriptions”
Religion, Literature, and Film 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 242A
Resistant Art Imagines Life?
Moderator: TBD
Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
“Sartre’s The Wall, Buddhist Meditation, and Internal Resistance Against the ‘Self’”
Tara Flanagan, Maria College
“The Ethics of Desire: Questioning the Use of Grotesque Physical and Religious Imagery in Visual Media”
Jon R. Stone, California State University, Long Beach
“‘Resistance Is Futile’: Subverting Prophetic Determinism in Science Fiction Films”
Religion, Science, and Technology 1 (9:15 – 10:45 a.m.) Memorial 242B
Religion, Science, Technology and Resistance
Moderator: Marianne Delaporte and Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University
Roberto Ranieri, University for Philosophical Research
“The Hero with a Thousand Facebook”
Megan A. Leverage, Northern Arizona University
“‘Ethnic Group’ and Resistance to Racial Pseudoscience in the Modern Skeptical Movement, Secular Humanism, New Atheism, and Black Humanism”
Melanie Dzugan, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Do Christians Resist the Alleviation of Suffering? Technology, Niebuhr, and the Political Significance of Suffering”
Second Session (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.)
Buddhist Studies 3 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 242A
Buddhist Resistance Movements, Part II
Moderator: Alison Jameson, University of Arizona; Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
Alina Pokhrel, University of California, Riverside
“The Transmission of Dhammā and Resistance to Religion: Is Vipassanā Meditation Buddhist?”
Steven Quach, University of California, Riverside
“Buddhist Meditation as Resistance: When Doing Nothing is Doing Something”
Sangseraima Ujeed, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Tracing the Footsteps of the Red Hats in Inner Mongolia”
Junfu Wong, University of Cambridge
“Breaking through the Secular Sufferings: Lay Buddhist Views and Forms of Detachment in Resistance to Political and Societal Upheaval in Medieval China (CE 386-584)”
Ethics 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 224
Contemporary Ethical Challenges
Moderator: Joshua Beckett, Fuller Theological Seminary
I Sil Yoon, Graduate Theological Union
“Theologically-Informed Restorative Justice: Resistance and Transformative Power for Human Rights Protections of Trafficked Stateless Women”
Blayne Roach, University of Arizona
“Spiritual Needs for Terminally Ill Patients: Exercising Religious-Based Care in Palliative Treatment”
Owen Anderson, Arizona State University
“How Studying the Humanities Can Address Ethical Challenges”
Graduate Student Professional Development 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 225
Finding Success on the Tenure Track Job Search: Tips from an AAR Mentor
Presenter: Jonathan Lee, San Francisco State University
Jonathan Lee is an active mentor in the American Academy of Religion’s Mentor Program. He has successfully mentored graduate students and freshly minted PhDs in their job search. Lee will share his "insider" experience in the job search process based on his own successes, lessons learned, and experiences from being on hiring committees and an AAR mentor since 2016. It is never too early to prepare for the job search, so start today by attending this session.
Jewish Studies 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 236
Moderator: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Tim Langille, Arizona State University
“To Resist or Not Resist? Different Responses to Cultural Trauma in Maccabees Daniel, and Josephus”
Françoise Mirguet, Arizona State University
“Compassion in Judeo-Hellenistic Literature: An Expression of Resistance against Imperial Propaganda”
Alexander Warren Marcus, Stanford University
“‘The Turning and Revolution of the Pieces of the Die’: Conceptualizing Fate in the Sasanian Empire”
Margot Mink Colbert, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Themes of Social Justice in the Choreography of Jewish Choreographers: Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, Wm. Bales”
Religion in America 2 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 242B
Unintended Tolerance: Dissent and Localism in Vast Early America
Moderator: Peter Van Cleave, Arizona State University
W. Scott Jackson, Arizona State University & Snow College
“The Process of Sanctification: A Bourdieusian Approach to the Declension of Power in New England Puritan Clergy”
Philip Robertson, Arizona State University & ASU Preparatory Academy
“Anti-Catholic Sentiment in the American Dutch Colonies”
Ingrid Sorensen, Arizona State University
“Conscience in Salem: An Examination of (In)Tolerance during the Witch Trials”
Queer Studies 1 (11:00 – 12:30 p.m.) Memorial 246
Desert, Art, and Activism: Identity, Sexuality, and Performance
Moderator: Marie Cartier, California State, Northridge; University of California, Irvine
Justin Sabia-Tanis, Pima Community College
“Queering the Three Graces: Delmas Howe and Cowboys in the Desert”
John Erickson & Martha Cecila Ovadia, Claremont Graduate University
“Pop! Culture Theologians: Activism, Culture, and Post-Academia Life”
Lunch (12:30 – 2:00 p.m.)
Lunch
12:45 – 2:00 p.m. – Business Meeting, Memorial 236
*All members of the AAR/WR are welcome to attend. Lunch is provided for the first 40 attendees.
Third Session (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.)
Goddess Studies 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 242B
Moderator: Jan Peppler, Pacifica Graduate Institute; Angela Sells, Sierra College
D'vorah J. Grenn, Napa Valley College
“Looking Beyond the Disrobing: Humanizing and Immortalizing Draupadi Today”
David Gowey, Arizona State University
“Change Me to a Chieftain”: Resistance and Persistence in Upland Panay
Island”
Shari Tarbet, Dine College
“Remembering, Recovering, and Reclaiming: How Priestesses in the Old Testament resisted Monotheism”
Ecology and Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 242A
Religious Environmental Philosophies and Pedagogies
Moderator: Matthew R. Hartman, Graduate Theological Union
Gordon Gilmore, Graduate Theological Union
“Flourishing Forms or Concretized Preconceptions?: Developing a Theoanthropic Epistemology for Living as a Member of Creation’s Community”
Gregory L. Hoenes, Claremont School of Theology
“Raising Our Children Differently: Toward an Ecological Civilization”
Philosophy of Religion 3 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 224
Resistance, Skeptical Theism, and Becoming a Self [Wildcard Session]
Moderator: Dane Sawyer, University of La Verne
Christopher Morales, University of California, Santa Barbara,
“Facing Resistance and Becoming Who One Is: The Ethics of Agonistic Friendship in Emerson and Nietzsche”
Stephen Quarles, Graduate Theological Union
“Resistance is Futile (Or, at least, It is that Way)”
Jeremy Brandt, University of Houston
“Skeptical Theism and the Scope of our Moral Horizons”
Camille Angel, University of San Francisco
“Queering Religion: Field Notes from a Catholic University”
Religions of Asia 3 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 226
Waging Resistance through Learning and Spirituality of the Self
Moderator: Michael Reading, Claremont School of Theology
Ha Yeon Shin, University of Arizona
“A Common Cause, a Common Enemy: The Resistance of Eastern Learning and Christianity in the late 19thand early 20thcentury in Korea”
Amelia Madueño, Doctoral Student, Arizona State University
“Revisiting Aum Shinrikyoō: The Role of Biased Language in the Rise of an “Anti-cult” Movement in Contemporary Japan”
Euiwan Cho, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Resisting Against Restless Protestant Religious Consumers in the Korean Burnout Society: Examining the Rising Interest of Desert Spirituality in the Korean Protestantism”
Patrick Yi Sang Chan, Fuller Theological Seminary
“How Churches in Hong Kong Respond to the Umbrella Movement”
Women and Religion 2 (2:15 – 3:45 p.m.) Memorial 236
Negotiating Power in Narrative and Resistance Movements
Moderator: Sara Frykenberg, Mount Saint Mary’s University
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Whittier College
“Young Adult Fantasy Novels as Sources of Empowerment and Resistance”
Victoria Karalun, Crafton Hills College
“The Red Tent: Re-Ritualization as Resistance to Patriarchal Medicine”
Doe Daughtrey, Arizona State University
“The #MeToo Movement and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
Sophie Barshay, University of Arizona
“’Fatal’ Deviations from Tradition: How the Christian New Right Influences American Conceptions of Family and Gender Roles as Exemplified in 80s and 90s Femme Fatal Movies
Save the Date!
March 13-15, 2020
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, California 91711