Faculty members in the Department of Religious Studies will be presenting and participating in panel discussions on a wide range of interdisciplinary topics at the 2023 American Academy of Religion annual meeting.

For more information visit https://www.aarweb.org/AARMBR/

The topics and panels covered are as follows:

Dr. Timothy Beal will be presenting a special session Writing — and Revising! — for Book Publication: A Conversation with William Germano and Timothy Beal, as well as presiding over a reception and presentation, Networking with AAR Publication Editors, both hosted by the AAR Publications Committee. He will also a panelist for The Prophetic Imagination: A Tribute and Reassessment, hosted by the Writing/Reading Jeremiah and Israelite Prophetic Literature units of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Dr. Joy Bostic will be a panelist for the Mysticism Unit’s session Who Counts as a Mystic? and Mysticism: Creativity, Synthesis, Marginality, and Embodiment, a session co-sponsored by the African Diasporic Religions, Mysticism, and Queer Studies in Religion units. She is also speaking on two panels honoring the late womanist theologian Delores S. Williams–Paul Tillich and Delores S. Williams in Dialogue and Sisters in the Wilderness: Honoring the Life and Scholarly Legacy of Womanist Theologian Delores S. Williams.

Dr. Brian Clites will speak at a Catholic Studies roundtable, chair a panel on Catholic theology and industrial farming, and chair a session on the future of the study of religion and sexual abuse.

Dr. Justine Howe will be a panelist for Islamic Revival and Euro-American Secularity as part of the Study of Islam and Secularism and Secularity Units. She will also be a roundtable participant for Muslim Economies, Charities, and Capitalism as part of the Religion and Economy Unit.

Dr. Malene Johnson will be presiding over Celebrating Vernacular Spirituality [Mis]Construed as Altern, Inappropriate or Transgressive as part of the African Diaspora Religions Unit.

Dr. Jue Liang will be speaking as a panelist in the roundtable From Knowledge and Liberation to Unbounded Wholeness through The Great Bliss Queen: In Honor of Anne C. Klein, co-sponsored by the Contemplative Studies Unit and the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Unit. She will also serve as a presider for the panel Between Human and Non-human Natures: Transcorporeality in Tibetan Buddhism.

Dr. Deepak Sarma will be the respondent for Mysticism and the Scholarship of Psychedelics as part of the Drugs and Religion Unit and Mysticism Unit.