Liberation Theologies Unit

Global Solidarities and the Margins

The Liberation Theologies Program Unit invites proposals that examine this year’s presidential theme, “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Margins” through the lens of global solidarities and the margins. We invite proposals that engage questions such as: How do the technologies and industries of violence impact diverse practices of solidarity and liberation? What does it look like to commit to the liberation of others and the environment? How are marginalized groups engaging in intersectional acts of solidarity?

Proposals on this theme might consider the following:

• Imperial Violence Beyond the Eurocentric Lens
• Structural Violence in the Everyday (the ways that our daily living are occasions of/for violence)
• Successes and Failures of Intersectional Practice
• The Creation of the Margins
• Global Technologies of Violence and Bias in Technologies of Violence
• Whose Violence/Whose Nonviolence
• Border Crossings and the Violence of/in the borders
• Difference between Nonviolence and Peacemaking
• Ecological Violence and Slow Violence
• Violence, Property, and Radical Environmentalism
• The Cost of Paradise
• The Political Production of the Peripheries
• The Margins as a site of Liberation
• The unit will be hosting a session during the June 2024 AAR Virtual Meeting. This call for proposals is for both Virtual-June 2024 and San Diego-November 2024.

Co-Sponsored Sessions for November 2024

The Legacies of Enrique Dussel, Jorge Pixley, and Franz Hinkelammert

The SBL’s Latino/a/e and Latin American Biblical Interpretation and Poverty in the Biblical World program units, together with the AAR’s Liberation Theologies and Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society program units, will host a session that honors three leading figures of liberation theology who passed away last year: Enrique Dussel, George/Jorge Pixley, and Franz Hinkelammert. We invite proposals that engage their intellectual legacies, especially by considering their impact on contemporary religious thought and biblical interpretation; the relevance of their ideas for addressing current social and economic crises; intersections between theology, philosophy, and biblical studies in their work; comparative analyses of their contributions and methodologies; and interpretations of scriptural texts that employ their thought to examine the texts’ economic and political dimensions and implications.

Theologies of Liberation in the Middle East

This session co-sponsored with the Middle Eastern Christianity Group explores how a growing number of Christian theologians in the Middle East have deployed liberation theology as a means of understanding their fraught political, social, and economic contexts across the region. We invite contributions addressing the strengths and difficulties in such theological engagement and engaging specific social, political, and economic contexts in the region. Proposals from scholars and theologians of/from the Middle East are especially encouraged.

Roundtable discussion on Mary Jo Iozzio’s newest book, Disability Ethics and Preferential Justice

Co-sponsored session with Religion and Disability Studies: A review panel on the book Disability Ethics and Preferential Justice: A Catholic Perspective by Mary Jo Iozzio. Panelists will critically engage the book's merits as a primer on disability ethics and an example of mature Catholic reflection on disability and liberation, as well as its potential impact on other theologies of disability and liberation. This session is pre-arranged and closed, and we will not be accepting proposals for it.