AAR 2019 - Conversation with Kate Bowler & Laurie Patton on Becoming a Public Intellectual

After Kate Bowler’s 2013 book, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, became an unexpected public hit, she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer at the age of 35. Kate was faced with the ironic situation of “being an expert on “health wealth and happiness while being ill.” Her 2018 memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, is a memoir exploring that existential irony, and the ways in the American belief that tragedy is a test of character shaped her own response to illness. Now a speaker in high demand, Kate will engage with AAR President Laurie Patton on her transformation. Their conversation will focus on what it has meant for Kate to become a public intellectual in the midst of being a scholar, teacher, mother, wife, and cancer survivor. In her own “expansion of the public sphere,” Kate has explored questions of divine will and justice in contexts far outside of academe. What has shifted in her understandings of the role of the scholar in the world? How has her own thinking about public life in America changed since she has started writing for and speaking to larger audiences? Do the questions Kate raises about the American prosperity gospel changed public discourse about illness, divine will, and tragedy? Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College, Presiding Panelists: Kate Bowler, Duke University This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 24.