Religious Studies faculty members present research at major conference

Faculty in the Department of Religious Studies presented research and participated in leadership roles at the joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), which took place online between Nov. 29 and Dec. 10.

Professor Brian Pennington, currently Chair of the AAR’s Teaching and Learning Committee (TLC), was elected to the AAR’s Board of Directors in October. He assumed the duties of his three-year term during the annual meeting. As TLC chair, he helped to organize two sessions related to teaching in the pandemic– one examining online teaching as a mode of social justice and one for recent Ph.D.’s now on the job market and preparing to demonstrate their teaching methods in virtual campus interviews.

As president of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions (SSJR), Professor Pamela Winfield organized and moderated a panel on “Old Paths and New Directions in Zen Buddhism: Celebrating Over Forty Years of Scholarship by Steven Heine.” She also presented a paper in the Buddhism and Japanese Religions co-sponsored panel on “The South Asian Roots of Japanese Buddhism: Seeking Shakyamuni by Richard Jaffe.” She also led the SSJR and Arts, Literature and Religion Unit business meetings.

Professors Winfield and Pennington and Assistant Professor Andrew Monteith were panelists at two sessions on the emerging figure of the public religion scholar. These sessions highlighted the work of a 10-member team examining the increasingly important public roles that scholars of religion are assuming in a polarized national climate. The initiative is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and headquartered at Appalachian State University with support from the Elon Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society.

Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies Lynn Huber presented twice as part of the Society of Biblical Literature. Her first paper, titled “Enslaved and Enthroned: Revelation’s Metaphorical Representation of the Faithful in Light of Ancient Enslavement Practices,” discussed a little-studied aspect of the text, specifically its enslavement imagery and its reference to “sealing” or branding individuals. Her second paper “On Priapic Humor in Revelation” was a part of review panel on Sarah Emanuel’s “Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome.”

Instructor Ian Nelson Mills presented a paper titled “Did Theophilus of Antioch compose a Gospel Harmony?” in a panel on canon formation. He also co-organized a panel on revising doctoral dissertations for publication.

Associate Professor and Director of the Multifaith Scholars Program Amy L. Allocco presided at a panel titled “The Search for Communal Identity and the Making of Digital Hindu Publics in North America” that was sponsored by AAR’s North American Hinduism Unit.  Because the pandemic prevented her from conducting ethnographic fieldwork in South India this past summer, Allocco’s presentation, in a panel titled “International Collaboration in the Time of COVID-19 and Post-Pandemic Futures,” was postponed to the 2021 Annual Meeting. Allocco’s field research in South India was to have been jointly conducted with Dr. Xenia Zeiler (University of Helsinki, Finland) under the auspices of an AAR Collaborative International Research Grant that they received together for a project titled “Sweetening and Intensification: Processes and Currents Shaping Hindu Ritual Practices in Contemporary South Asia.”