Religious Studies faculty present research at major conference

Faculty in the Department of Religious Studies presented research and participated in a number of leadership roles at the joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), held Nov. 17-20 in Denver, Colorado. The conference regularly attracts more than 10,000 scholars of religion and theology from around the world.

Professor Amy Allocco presented a paper titled “Establishing Connection, Navigating Difference, and the Contours of Slum Religion,” responding to Nathaniel Roberts’s “To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum” (University of California Press, 2016). She also presented a paper responding to a panel titled “Migration and Materiality: The ‘Stuff’ of the Hindu Diaspora.” In her role as chair of the AAR’s International Connections Committee (ICC), Allocco also presided over the ICC’s full-day meeting and hosted the AAR’s International Members’ Reception.

Professor Sarah Bloesch responded to a panel that focused on the two new books that she co-edited with Meredith Minister. The panel was titled “Re-Thinking the Teaching of Theories and Methods: A Discussion of Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion” (Bloomsbury, 2018) and “The Bloomsbury Reader for Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion” (2018).”

Professor Geoffrey Claussen presented a paper titled “Moses and the Kid, Judah and the Calf, and the Disavowal of Compassion,” as part of a panel on “Reading Animals in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature through the Works of Aaron Gross and Donovan Schaefer.”

Professor Lynn Huber presented a response to a panel on “The Bible Odyssey Website in Social Scientific Perspective,” and also presided over a session on LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics.

Professor Brian Pennington served as a member of an AAR task force writing guidelines for religious literacy for all college graduates in the United States. The “College-Wide Guidelines Project” launched its publicity and dissemination campaign at this meeting.

Professor Toddie Peters presented “In Our Own Words: Women, Religion, and Choice” for the Colorado Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; she presented with co-editor Grace Kao on their new book “Encountering the Sacred: Feminist Reflections on Women’s Lives” (T&T Clark, 2018) for a panel on “Publishing Panel: New Visions of Response-Ability: Assessing Opportunities and Risks”; she responded to a panel that discussed her book, “Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice” (Beacon, 2018), in a session titled “Trust Women (Beacon Press, 2018): From a Justification Paradigm to Reproductive Justice”; she participated in a panel titled “Immigration, Racial Tensions, and Polarization Under Trump: Findings from the PRRI American Values Survey”; and she was also honored at the conference with the Walter Wink Scholar-Activist Award from Auburn Theological Seminary.

Professor LD Russell was honored at the conference with the Kathleen Connolly-Weinert Leader of the Year Award from the National Board of Theta Alpha Kappa, the Religious Studies Honor Society, in recognition of his “vigorous support of undergraduate Religious Studies students at Elon University, as well as vibrant work as moderator for the Alpha Tau chapter.”

Professor Pamela Winfield presented a paper on “Dōgen’s Rhetorical and Material Citation of the Lotus Sūtra” for a panel on “Repetition with a Difference: Arts of Citation and Textual Bodies of Buddhism.”  She also led meetings and organized panels in her role as co-chair of AAR Arts, Literature and Religion Unit; and as the newly-elected President of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions (SSJR), she introduced and moderated the Society’s “Editors’ Roundtable: Publishing in the Field of Japanese Religions.”