Tracing Activism through Religion and Media

As we grapple with the myriad vulnerabilities exposed by—but present long before—an ongoing pandemic, we need ways to theorize our relationships to our scholarship and our communities. Activist work offers ways for us to reimagine these relationships as interrelated and mutually constitutive. However, activism has also been mobilized in nationalist contexts to support the structures of oppression. Following the workshop’s previous discussions of catastrophe and repair, this workshop will trace the convergence of religion, media, and activism. Working across multiple registers, activism appears within religious groups, through creative media integral to resistance, and in infrastructures mediated by religion. Through a combination of roundtable discussions, shared readings, and presentations, we will explore how religion and media converge across this contested terrain. Taking into account activism’s various potentials, we seek to reimagine our collective futures.