Online Meeting 2024 Program Book

Shi‘a tradition promises divine rewards for mourning the martyrdom of Shi‘a holy figures. Yet, the young participants of Shi‘a rituals in Tehran mostly emphasize how participating in rituals brings liveliness, success, and peace to their daily lives. Given the historical centrality of suffering in Shi‘a rituals, how could we understand these mourners’ emphasis on rituals’ worldly benefits? Drawing on my fieldwork in Tehran, I elucidate how my interlocutors’ narratives invoke two discursive resources: state-sponsored Islamist activism, which prescribes positive emotions as a prerequisite for realizing particular religious-political ambitions, and neoliberal productivism, which promotes the self-management of emotions as a means to maximizing material advantage. I argue that my interlocutors’ narratives allow them to employ and challenge both Islamist and neoliberal discourses; they use a productivist logic to resist secular criticisms that dismiss Shi‘a mourning rituals as irrational and anti-modern, yet their individualist interpretations challenge normative conceptions of these collective rituals.

This paper contributes to the debates on the use of the terms Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism in both popular and academic spheres through an examination of how legal categories, biological essentialism, and the logic of dehumanization inform the description and self-description of marginalized groups. I draw connections between a number of seemingly disparate phenomena — that I argue are intricately connected through a scientistic logic — ranging from the controversy on academic freedom and tolerance after a US university fired an instructor for showing Prophet Muhammad’s image in class, debates about the effect of age on women’s reproductive capacities, arguments over the existence of “gay genes” in LGBTQ rights discourse, and the differential treatment of women and children in wars, to illustrate what is at stake in the struggle to articulate Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, the distinction between chosen and imposed — or visible and invisible — identities, and the politics of translation.

This presentation is part of a chapter of a forthcoming book (2024) about *howzevi* or seminarian women who use their Islamic education to do the work of supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran. They are women historically caricatured as puppets of the Islamic Republic. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Tehran, I complicate this narrative by demonstrating how a young seminarian woman's use of Islamic knowledge helped her navigate religious conservatism in a women’s seminary and secularism in her extracurricular English classes. In doing so, I argue for the importance of anthropology’s humanizing endeavor at a time in Iran when it has become easy to disregard women’s diverse experiences.

Using a collaboration between an artist and scholar of religious studies as a case study, the ongoing “Noo Icons” media arts project explores how AI image-making tools are well suited to explore the visual history of the religious transcendent. Building on the scholarship of Hito Steyerl and Eryk Salvaggio, AI art’s usage as a diagnostic tool for deciphering internet biases is compared to the scholar of religious studies' theoretical method of redaction criticism. This article explores ways in which the training set data of AI image-making programs can be refined to produce more accurate composite images, as well as the power for these tools to be used as visual aids in the creation of “imagined realities:” images for which we have credible eyewitness testimony, but which we do not have photographic evidence for. The ethics of AI image-making is primary to the methodology advanced in this interdisciplinary mode.

With the explosive growth of “spiritual consultants,” “ancient technologists,” “sacred entrepreneurs,” and “directors of possibility,” any conversation regarding the ways religion materializes in the workplace demands a critical engagement with such an explicit effort to manage workspace by introducing corporate spirituality. This essay suggests that Barbara and John Ehrenreich’s work on the “professional-managerial class,” or PMC, can offer a useful foothold for understanding spiritual consultation and its role in the reproduction and maintenance of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations. The direct and targeted involvement of the PMC spiritualist is looking to expertly style the spiritual formation of work spaces in such a way as to not only maintain the capitalist order but to increase profits as well. This essay hopes to take seriously the theological and religious work of these “spiritual entrepreneurs” by outlining the basic dimensions of PMC spirituality.

The paper considers colonized bodies on the move from the Global South as it explores how religion mediates mobility and structural immigration policies and processes. I argue that imperial processes for colonized bodies on the move engender what I call rites of mobility—a performance of contestation of dominant structures, negotiation of imposed dominant labels, and re-construction of placemaking and belonging.

Based on fieldwork research in a Ghanaian neo-Pentecostal church known as the Power Chapel Worldwide in Kumasi, popular for its innovative travel ritual praxis, I explore the phenomenon and suggest that imperial constructs of migration processes, especially for marginalized groups are contested and (re)negotiated in local religious spaces. The questions the paper seeks to answer are how do Ghanaian Pentecostal ritual agents negotiate, contest, and redefine impeding structures of migration, and when are the practices performed?

The paper will discuss Friedrich Schleiermacher’s views on music as expressed in his Lectures on Aesthetics (1819-33), and compare them with his lectures on practical divinity and other writings. Schleiermacher perceived an organic link between music and religion. In On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), he used the term “music of religion” when discussing the nature of his religious feelings, and described a “language of the heart” that linked human and religious affections. The paper will also discuss Schleiermacher’s views on music in the context of German Romanticism in his efforts to explain the centrality of music and religion.

The shift of world Christianity towards the Global South and its rising significance in Asia introduces the “Global East” concept, highlighting Asia’s key role and encouraging comparisons with Africa. This underscores striking connections and differences between these two regions, particularly within the context of global Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism greatly contributes to the rise of indigenous churches in non-Western World, notably AICs and China’s Three-self Movement, due to its proximity to local traditions. However, its American-dominated narrative often fails to fully capture the essence of indigenous movements, leading to a paradoxical relationship of both convergence and divergence. Therefore, a Pneuma-centric reconceptualization of Christian identity is essential in the Global South and East, going beyond traditional Pentecostalism towards a unique, non-western spirituality found in Africa’s “Spiritual Churches” and Asia’s “spiritual Christians.” This approach, emphasizing Spirit-centered practices and local expressions, seeks authentic Christianity that reflects global diversity and continues the apostolic age’s legacy.

Described as the “common cold” of mental health problems, depression is a burgeoning issue in the United States. Although depression is commonly pathologized as a biochemical, clinical disorder, there are claims that personal, social, and cultural contexts shape depression and that it is the contemporary society that makes people depressed. However, there is little research exploring how the Pentecostal social context might contribute to or shape Pentecostals’ experiences of depression. This dissertation contributes to this research gap. It uses Grounded Theory to facilitate an interpretative interaction between the researcher and the data to answer the research question of how Pentecostals living in the United States experience, understand, and respond to depression. The emergent theory helps explain the participants’ depression experiences and the meaning they created around those experiences while also exploring how their meanings and actions are embedded and shaped within larger social constructs. 

Prior to the Bhagavadgītāparvan (6.14–40) in the Mahābhārata’s book 6 (Bhīṣmaparvan), which itself contains the BhG proper (6.23–40), there are two sections referred to as the Jambūkhaṇḍavinirmāṇaparvan (6.1–11), the 'book on the measuring out of the continent of the rose-apple tree' and the Bhūmiparvan (6.12–13), the ‘book of the earth'. Much of the scholarly attention on these parvans has been concerned with matters of source criticism of the so-called “cosmographical episode” from Mbh 6.6 to 6.13, which bridges the two sections (e.g., Hilgenberg 1934; Belvalkar 1939, 1947). In this paper I propose to consider both these parvans within the context of their narration, especially as a preamble to the war (and the intervening episode of the BhG), where they work to develop and anticipate the human, earthly, and cosmological consequences of the battle, and emphasise the land over which the battle will be fought.

The Mahābhārata's Ādiparvan description of the descent of the gods (aṃśāvataraṇa, MBh 1.58-61) is retold in the Harivaṃśa (HV 40-45), which expands significantly upon the epic's plan of and rationale for divine intervention. The first task of this paper is to underscore how and why the Harivaṃśa modifies and amplifies the Mahābhārata aṃśāvataraṇa. Secondly, however, I treat a number of sources which refine the aṃśāvataraṇa intervention account. Some of these have been treated already by Paul Hacker (e.g. the Rāmopākhyāna within the Mahābhārata, MBh 3.258-260 and Brahma Purāṇa 180-181). My chief focus, however, will be the Bhāratamañjarī of Kṣemendra (ca. 11th century), whose handling and retelling of the original Ādiparvan and Harivaṃśa materials may help to attest the impact of the Harivaṃśa on the popular reception and understanding of the epic story itself.

This paper focuses on the motif of the Unburdening of the Earth by reviewing five relevant passages structured as a form of *Ringkomposition*: *MBh*. 1.58.3 – 59.6 narrated by Vaiśaṃpāyana, *MBh*. 1.189 narrated by Vyāsa, *MBh*. 2.33.10–20 narrated by Nārada, *MBh*. 11.8.20–38 again narrated by Vyāsa, and *MBh*. 18.5.7–25 again narrated by Vaiśaṃpāyana. Then, those texts are compared with five Greek passages dealing with the same motif: *Iliad* 1.1-5, *Iliad* 2.1-6, *Iliad* 12.3-33, *Odyssey* 8.71-82, and *Cypria* fr. 1. Against more accepted explanations like Folk origin or Indo-European origin, and after dealing with the main methodological problems that such proposal would entail, the paper argues for a Greco-Indian origin (understood as a Greek influence in India) of the motif, along the lines of Wulff Alonso (2008, 2014, 2019a, 2019b, 2020).

In the Nordic countries, most infants have traditionally been baptized in the Lutheran majority churches. For the last decades the percentage of infants baptized has showed a steady decline. In a joint research project, the five Nordic folk churches have studied reasons for this development and analyzed the churches’ responses. A forthcoming book is the result of this project and looks at empirical research, churches' responses, liturgy, and theology, focusing on themes such as Lutheran theology, ecumenical and interfaith issues, and ecology. The book is the result of a two years' research process and with its combination of empirical data (quantitative and qualitative), and practical and systematic theology it is a valuable contribution to theological discussion.

World War I brought significant challenges for American Lutherans who had remained closely connected to German or Scandinavian language and cultural practices. While politicians proclaimed a “return to normalcy” following the war, white nativists seized upon post-war anxiety about immigration and radicalism. The state of Oregon became a hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan. Voters approved a “compulsory education” bill in 1922 requiring all children aged 8-16 to attend public schools. As northern European Protestants, Lutherans could opt to blend into the “100 percent American” mainstream. However, rather than acceding, the Lutheran Schools Committee organized in opposition. Despite the discrimination they had faced during WWI, freedom to pursue Lutheran education for their children overrode any desire to conform. This project illustrates how Lutherans negotiated ever-present tensions between assimilation and distinctiveness during the 1920s—a story with grave relevance for people of faith grappling, theologically and strategically, with Christian nationalism today.

This paper proposes to examine the theologies of two theological contemporaries, Martin Luther (1483-1546) and Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), in order to explore possibilities for foregrounding colonial discourses as transcending denominations and therefore constituting broader intra-European theological concerns. Such a conversation reveals similar concerns regarding the theological and political status of non-Christians, the rhetorical and political strategies for projects of conversion and catechesis, and shared conceptions of the human more generally. This paper seeks to contribute a fuller understanding to the extent to which Protestant reformers such as Luther, despite their apparent historical remove from projects of colonialism, might have contributed to the broader epistemological, political, and indeed, theological conditions for Protestant coloniality in the 17th century and later.