This panel draws on ongoing work related to the field of AI, including from two grant-funded research projects. The first, entitled "Understanding Spiritual Intelligence," is a project of the International Society for Science and Religion and includes a major focus on artificial intelligence. The second, managed by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, is entitled "Virtuous AI?: Cultural Evolution, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtue." and explores how AI will shape us and society as well as the relationship between humans, AI, and virtue. The panel will present new research relating intelligence and AI to spirituality and culture. Braden Molhoek addresses how AI can change human culture, help or hinder our acquisition of virtue, and whether AI is capable of some kind of virtue. Noreen Herzfeld, author of The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationships in a Robotic Age (2023), examines whether we can have a truly authentic relationship with an AI. Harris Wiseman explores processes of "slow knowing" and their role in describing spiritual intelligence.
Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book
This panel will focus on the stories of scholars of religion who aren’t primarily teaching in a tenure-line position in a university department of religion/theology. One panelist retired as a university professor, but didn’t start that position until he was 65. Another works at the intersections of philosophy, theology, and psychology as a dean at a school of education. A third provides critical scholarly research on American Muslims, while the fourth directs programs in religion at an international nonprofit organization. The panel is moderated by the contingent faculty director for the AAR.
The Status of Women in the Profession Committee and the Status of Racial & Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee will co-sponsor a women’s mentoring lunch. The luncheon is open to female-identified members of AAR at any stage of their professional journey and offers space for candid conversations about the challenging issues which the participants are facing. Registration is required.
Panelist
Board members, authors and friends are invited to this Encyclopedia of Jewish-Christian Relations Network Meeting.
The international book series promotes creative and innovative theological engagements at the intersection of gender and ecology, with an emphasis on the engagement with Judeo-Christian theology. Books published in this series further intersect with various fields of study shaping the environmental humanities and environmental science, such as new materialism, affect theory, petro-culture studies, animal studies, decolonial theory and Indigenous studies.
Are you an educator of color? Come to the BIPOC Faculty Luncheon to connect, share, and learn from others in a supportive environment. We hope to explore self-care as an essential component of the teaching life within a network that cares about the successful navigation of the classroom, your institution, and academic career. Esteemed Womanist Ethicist Dr. Emilie Townes will be our featured speaker. She will share about self-care from the “rear view.” Come hear Dr. Townes offer wisdom on self-care that takes her entire teaching and scholarly life into perspective. RSVP: https://bit.ly/3PDmGVv
In this roundtable, participants at different stages of their careers and with different backgrounds and fields of specialization will share how they initiated a “maternal turn” in their studying, teaching, researching, and publishing on motherhood and religions. By emphasizing the “maternal turn” in religious studies and the emergence of a new subfield marked by matricentric feminism, we mean to address a triple-blind: religious traditions rarely consider the experience of mothers as central, scholars who study them tend to focus on feminine figures who are either goddesses or who are not mothers (saints, nuns, virgins, priestesses, etc.), and even those who study feminine agency in religions overlook the distinction between the institution of motherhood and the experience of mothering. Ample time will be given for a general discussion and Q&A with all attendees.