Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

In The Abolition of Man, C S Lewis argues that modern technocratic approaches to knowledge threaten to plunge us headlong into natural, cultural, and anthropological crisis, the abolition of both nature and humanity. Lewis draws the book to a close with the suggestion that our way out of this situation lies in rediscovering a more Platonic natural philosophy – a kind of contemplative science – but he gives little indication of what such a a regenerate natural science might look like. I argue that one powerful historical precedent for such an approach can be found in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, especially in the remarkable Essays on Method. In these eight essays, Coleridge presents a compelling Platonic vision of what it means to know nature, one that sees science itself as bound up with the recognition of nature as poetry, a tissue of symbols not yet understood but instinctively recognized.

Challenging the view that the Christian adaptation of Platonism only leads to a degradation of non-human nature, this paper will draw on the exemplary synthesis of Neoplatonism and Christianity in the early theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE), showing that this synthesis actually reveals an understanding of nature as much more than a resource or tool for human use. As Maximus demonstrates using Platonic participation and Neoplatonic-Aristotelian teleology, the Christian understanding is that God is the source and final goal of creation, and that created being’s excellence or virtue, its flourishing, is to be in union with the divine Logos. Using a Logos-theology, and the language of being, well-being, and eternal-well-being, Maximus teaches us how a theocentric approach, against an anthropocentric one, orients the human as existing within the rest of nature, all of which is moved toward flourishing in God.

While popularly known for his works of literature and poetry, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe viewed his lesser-known scientific pieces as his most enduring achievement. I will argue Goethe’s unique scientific methodology is informed by a metaphysical commitment to a form of Platonism and that Goethe provides an intriguing alternative paradigm that unifies science, philosophy, theology, and ethics. I begin by demonstrating how Goethe’s concept of the Urphänomen offers a Platonic conception of natural beings. I then briefly outline how this alternative scientific approach, one freed from a commitment to reductionism and materialism, ultimately derives from his Platonic conceptions. Next, I demonstrate the ethical and spiritual implications of Goethean science, establishing that Goethe’s approach bridges the divide between our scientific endeavors and spiritual formation. There is, then, a continued relevance for Goethe in conversations regarding ecological ethics and our perception of nature.

Shakespeare’s early Henry VI plays and late *The Tempest* both feature reclusive, bookish rulers who are deposed because their rivals perceive an opportunity in the rulers’ lack of interest in political affairs. Furthermore, the deposed rulers also share an interest in Platonic philosophies of the Renaissance. They differ, however, in their respective preferences for particular Platonist authors and writings. While Henry VI is devoted to Boethius’s *Consolation of Philosophy*, Prospero, the protagonist of *The Tempest* practices Neoplatonic magic, described in the Renaissance by Ficino. While the two plays aren’t often read together, I argue that doing so yields a fascinating contrast in the modes of existence dictated by different streams of Platonic thought. While Henry VI’s stoic, introspective Platonism leads him to adopt an attitude of extreme passivity and surrender, Prospero relates powerfully to others and to nature with his magical Platonism and ultimately wins back his dukedom.

The Diné concept of contamination provides an alternative way to think about the categories of “evil” and “pollution.” Building on the dynamic and fluid character of Diné cosmology and the synecdochic and transitive nature of Diné ontology, this paper explores two forms of contamination that are the focus of Enemyway and Evilway ceremonialism. The first derives from contact with death, the dead, and their property within the Diné community. The second arises from foreign or non-Diné sources, particularly those that conflict with traditional Diné lifeways.

The paper begins with a discussion of Diné cosmogony and introduces the concepts of “pairing” and the oppositional pairing of *hózhó* and *hóchxo*, often glossed as harmony and disharmony respectively. It then moves to an examination of Diné conceptualization of personhood. Finally, it relates the above discussion to contamination and the remedial ceremonies designed to negate the two types of contamination introduced above.

Is the differentiation between evil and good obvious? This paper argues that the biased view of a created dichotomy between evil and good is not an easy solution to differentiate evil from good. No single bases can judge what is good or evil.

In Shintoism, there is no inherent evil, but there are equally distributed chances for everyone to become evil or good. Shintoism believes that object matters have inherent spirits (tukumogami) and are inherently neutral.

Shintoism avoids contamination and pollution since it is believed to call and create space for evil to reside. In short, the representation of internal purity is realised through the purity and cleanliness of the external. This paper examines the act of cleaning as purifying the evil that resonates with impurity.

In this paper I will examine a Hindu perspective on karmic pollution expressed in the Nyaya concept of "adrsta" or the unseen force. This force, which combines both merits, or dharma, and demerits, or adharma, is a causal mechanism and regulating force which bounds not only the individual, as it impacts one's karma, but also the whole universe, as it is one of the general causes, or karana. Moreover, in this alternative model, even *God is bounded by it, which does make the theory prone to the popular problem of theodicy. As will be explicated, this still underrepresented in the global philosophy of religion worldview does not centre around the problem of evil, instead focuses on collective actions and redistribution of outcomes.

In this paper, I present addiction as a helpful case study for examining some of the tensions around the question of agency within the literature on moral injury. People suffering from addiction often perpetrate harms on those around them in pursuit of their ‘drug of choice,’ and experience the devastation of moral injury as a result. As is well known, a major point of departure within the literature on the definition of moral injury is around the question of who inflicts the wound of moral injury (i.e., someone else or the self). Addiction offers an interesting case study in that it demonstrates that it is possible to be both the person who inflicts the harm and a victim of the harm (i.e., the disease of addiction and the resultant moral injury) at the same time, which shows that the binaries we tend to operate in need not always apply.

Though the terminology of moral injury and accompanying recovery strategies are yet to be explored from Korean perspectives and practices and are generally unknown by the general population and impacted individuals in South Korea, the South Korean context is a rich site to explore the concepts of moral injury and collective resilience. This paper will review the historical and political contexts of the Korean peninsula that undergird collective and intergenerational trauma among Koreans, as well as the state of research on military trauma and moral injury in South Korea. Drawing on political, religious, spiritual, and social practices of collective action by Koreans, we will make connections to South Korean methods of moral injury recovery and possibilities for further research on this topic and context.

Joshua Pederson’s Sin Sick focuses on the pain of those who breach their own ethical principles and addresses healing from moral injury through the process of witnessing. I examine Pederson’s application of what Domnick LaCapra calls “empathetic unsettlement,” and then argue that Pederson meaningfully shows how literary fiction may aid to develop moral injury witness. However, I also question how adequately Pederson takes into account the experience of trauma manifest in autobiographical accounts such as those described by psychiatrist Dori Laub. While I find Laub’s own understanding of trauma theory in relationship to traumatic dissociation problematic, I propose that fictional accounts stand at a meaningful distance from the direct experience of trauma in Laub’s interview subjects (including adaptive/protective trauma responses manifest through such subjects). Failing to explore issues of direct experience of trauma in moral injury risks ignoring how trauma may impair the recognition of moral injury itself.

This paper presents a pedagogical approach to teaching an introductory humanities course, Religion and Culture in Bollywood Film, at a mid-sized Canadian prairie University. Students enrolled in this course are mostly South Asian (by birth or heritage), and mostly Muslim. The course plan centres student reflective processes in an anti-racist exploration of diasporic values and identity. The films illustrate the negotiation of relationships: within and between individuals, families, and societies. These relationships are not only escapist entertainment. Through reflective exercises in the classroom, they become fodder for analysis of identity, family relationships, and generational change. Through careful selection of films and by assigning secondary sources written from emic perspectives, students develop reflective fluency and skill in expressing their religious and cultural perspectives. By providing a safe space for exploring these cultural differences, the course gently encourages students to reaffirm the value and plurality of their own experiences and identities.

This study focuses on the schooling experiences of K-5 Muslim immigrant children in Toronto, Canada, by exploring the stories they share with their mothers. Adopting an anti-colonial theoretical framework, the study examines children’s stories as they inform how teachers’ attitudes and practices either dismiss or appreciate Muslim children’s cultures and identities in educational settings. The study engages with storytelling to capture the voices of immigrant children and disrupt educators’ deficit mentalities impacting immigrant students and their families. Through interviews with ten Muslim mothers about the stories their children share at home, the study aims to deconstruct students’ "emotionally sensed knowledge" regarding their schooling experience, developed throughout the educational process. The study highlights the need for anti-Islamomisia and anti-Muslim racism education targeted at teachers, school staff, and non-Muslim families, and provides recommendations for combating deeply ingrained oppressive structures and ideologies.

In recent decades American-Catholic views of Islam have been formed largely by a profitable “Islamophobia industry” that promotes negative stereotypes of Muslims and emphasizes examples of conflict over those of cooperation. Resisting and confronting Catholic Islamophobia is thus primarily the responsibility of American Catholics. Drawing on my own experience as a Catholic theologian teaching at a Catholic university, I propose to discuss three primary ways I have sought to challenge Islamophobia. Research: understanding examples of encounter, dialogue, and friendship with Muslims rather than rivalry and conflict. Teaching: helping non-Muslim students appreciate the values and beauty of Islam and assuring Muslim students that Islam is being presented on campus respectfully and sympathetically. Service: advocating for Muslim students and colleagues in a Catholic milieu and working to shift esteem for Muslims from the periphery to the center of the university’s Catholic mission.

The global outbreak of xenophobic attitudes that promote hostility on the basis of both racial and religious differences has made clear the close relationship of Islamophobia and antisemitism. These two forms of bigotry racialize their targets, Jews having long been seen as a “race” and Muslims now being racialized as “non-White” and a security threat. It is, therefore, appropriate to regard both as forms of racism and to seek approaches to educate against them together, particularly as the issue of Israel/Palestine has been used to set the two groups apart. This paper will demonstrate a pedagogy for such a joint approach to countering Islamophobia and antisemitism: a presentation by Muslim and Jewish speakers who will discuss the issues confronting both communities, including the challenges of antisemitism and Islamophobia and of maintaining their respective identities as two of the largest religious minorities in the United States.

As Muslim writers articulate their “Muslimness”, how do they respond to and challenge contemporary anti-Muslim rhetoric? This essay affirms the significance of Muslim American literature and the potential it holds to help counter Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. More specifically, Samira Ahmed's Internment (2019) serves as a tool, in the classroom (high school and college) and in community settings, for teaching against Islamophobia and highlighting the complex reality of anti-Muslim racism and its various impacts.

Internment is a dystopian novel that imagines a near-future America where American Muslims are stripped of their civil rights and forced into internment camps. The text addresses various facets of Islamophobia as it establishes a connection between individual and systemic anti-Muslim racism; contextualizes the fictional internment of Muslims in America within historical American as well contemporary global realities; illustrates its wide-ranging impacts on Muslim American individuals and community; and highlights forms of resistance and communal solidarities.

In this paper, I address the intersection of gender transition and religious conversion, a dynamic currently under-discussed in trans* religious studies. I examine Mariecke van den Berg’s essay “Embodying Transformation,” which highlights parallels between gender transition and religious conversion in looking at two memoirs about transition (one gender and one religious) by Jewish women. While van den Berg’s paper does much to probe these transition–conversion parallels, it neglects an in-depth analysis of the *intersection* of the two. That is, in van den Berg’s paper, as in the two books she analyzes, only one identity -- religion or gender -- changes at a time. This paper, then, continues where van den Berg left off, and attempts to take seriously what a deeper instability between gender and religious identity, and their simultaneous *intersection,* might look like, and additionally what importance such a theorization holds for both trans* theory and for academic religious studies.

The idea of being a mother usually includes certain expectations not only of the social role it refers to, but physical characteristics of the mother’s body. This paper examines some ways that the idea of the mother can be invoked to stabilise feminine identities for those whose bodies do not meet these physical requirements, particularly trans women. Recognition as a mother legitimises the femininity of these bodies, lending them the physical characteristics they lack in themselves because motherhood as an ideal assumes the body it applies to is a woman’s. When expressed, the desire for recognition as a woman is often misrecognised as erotic, as in Freud’s reading of Daniel Paul Schreber. In Schreber’s Memoirs and the novel Detransition, Baby, however, it is clear that this desire is the desire for the recognition of a bodily fact, a fact which becoming a mother will render visible.

This paper explores the intersection of monastic practice with non-normative constructions of gender and intimacy in the eighteenth-century Pietist cloister of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Drawing on an understudied eighteenth-century archive of textual and material culture records, I introduce what I call Ephrata’s salvific transness. I propose that Ephrata’s soteriology assumed that devoted Christians could transcend male/female binaries and retrieve a perfect androgynous unity in the image of the Divine that had been lost in the lapse of Adam. If Ephrata’s brothers and sisters dedicated their lives to an intimate mystical union with Christ/Sophia they would ultimately be resurrected as a prelapsarian *Gott-mann-weiblichen licht-leib* (divine-man-womanly body of light). I then investigate how Ephrata’s subject formation explored the disconnect between their female and male-perceived bodies and their ideal androgynous self and aimed to bring both into alignment through embodied devotional practices such as fasting and hymnody, as well as material designs.