American Academy of Religion

An Author-Meets-Critics Roundtable Session discussing Saba Mahmood’s recently published book, "Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report" (Princeton University Press, 2016). Bringing together both senior and junior scholars invested in questions of secularism and secularity from varied disciplinary and thematic perspectives including American religious history, the study of Sikhism, Middle East politics, and modern Arabic literature, this panel will wrestle with the key themes, arguments, and conceptual interventions of this important book. It will also provide an opportunity to explore and engage new questions connected to modern secular governance, state sovereignty, minority rights, religious liberty, and the intersection of secularism, sexuality, and the family. Panelists: - SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College, presiding - Nermeen Mouftah, Northwestern University - Arvind Mandair, University of Michigan - Mona Oraby, Indiana University - John Modern, Franklin and Marshall College Responding: Saba Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley

Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. Alexander is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Stanford Law School. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to entering academia, Alexander served as the director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, where she coordinated the Project’s media advocacy, grassroots organizing, coalition building, and litigation. The Project’s priority areas were educational equity and criminal justice reform, and it was during those years at the ACLU that she began to awaken to the reality that our nation’s criminal justice system functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control. She became passionate about exposing and challenging racial bias in the criminal justice system, ultimately launching and leading a major campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement known as the “DWB Campaign” or “Driving While Black or Brown Campaign.” In addition to her nonprofit advocacy experience, Alexander has worked as a litigator at private law firms including Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, in Oakland, California, where she specialized in plaintiff-side class-action lawsuits alleging race and gender discrimination. In 2005, she won a Soros Justice Fellowship, which supported the writing of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (The New Press, 2012), and that same year she accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. She currently devotes much of her time to freelance writing; public speaking; consulting with advocacy organizations committed to ending mass incarceration; and, most important, raising her three young children—the most challenging and rewarding job of all. In this plenary address from the 2016 AAR Annual Meeting, Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas (Goucher College) interviews Alexander, and the women converse in turn about racial (in)justice, the election, and religion's role in U.S. politics. The session is introduced by 2016 AAR president, Serene Jones. This plenary was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, on November 20.

AM 2016: This panel provides some comparative insights on the current situation in Europe alongside experiences in the USA, exploring how religion is located within these debates, for instance as a foundation for appeals to national or civilizational identities that exclude certain groups, as well as a means for overcoming conflict and providing support and advocacy for vulnerable immigrant communities. What are the implications of defining refugees/immigrants in terms of their faith and ethnicity, including the ways in which this can fuel negative stereotypes? And how do we make sense of the ambiguous response of Christian churches/Christianity in both the USA and Europe in addressing issues around immigration? The panelists address these questions and others through comparative insights drawing upon the social and political sciences, as well as theological approaches. Panelists: - Emma Tomalin, University of Leeds - Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame - Daniel Groody, University of Notre Dame - Jocelyne Cesari, Harvard University - Erin Wilson, University of Groningen - Victor Carmon, Oblate School of Theology This panel session was recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 21, in San Antonio, Texas.

AAR's 2016 American Lectureship in the History of Religions was held by Iranian academic and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz, who at this session at the 2016 AAR Annual Meeting, delivers her capstone lecture. Born and raised in the city of Shiraz, completed her studies in Shiraz University, and University of London. She taught at Washington University in St. Louis for over twenty years where she chaired the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from 2004 to 2011. In 2012, Keshavarz joined the University of Maryland as Roshan Institute Chair in Persian Studies, and director of Roshan Institute for Persian Studies. Keshavarz is the author of award-winning books including "Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi" (USC Press, 1998), "Recite in the Name of the Red Rose" (USC Press, 2006), and "Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than 'Lolita' in Tehran"(UNC Press, 2007). She has also published other books and numerous journal articles. Keshavarz is a published poet in Persian and English and an activist for peace and justice. She was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly on the significance of cultural education. Her NPR show “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi” brought her the Peabody Award in 2008. In the same year, she received the Herschel Walker Peace and Justice Award. Keshavarz is introduced by Louis A. Ruprecht (Georgia State University) followed by Ebrahim E. I. Moosa (University of Notre Dame). This session was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 20 in San Antonio, Texas. Learn more about the American Lectures in the History of Religions at https://www.aarweb.org/programs-services/history-of-religions-lectures.

To commemorate and celebrate the ten year anniversary of Obery Hendricks' "The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted" (Doubleday, 2006), Hendricks is joined by a panelist of activists, academics, scholars, and pastors convene a roundtable to discuss the influential nature of this work. Panelists: - Andre E. Johnson, University of Memphis, Presiding - Eboni Marshall Turman, Yale University - Reverend Jesse Jackson, Operation Push, Chicago, IL - Nyasha Junior, Temple University - Gary Dorrien, Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary - Keri Day, Brite Divinity School - Michael Eric Dyson, Georgetown University - Obery M. Hendricks, Columbia University

Serene Jones was the 2016 president of the American Academy of Religion and the sixteenth President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 179-year-old interdenominational seminary, Jones occupies the Johnston Family Chair for Religion and Democracy and has formed Union’s Institute for Women, Religion, and Globalization as well as the Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, and chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Yale Divinity School, and Yale University. Jones is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. The author of several books including Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety and Trauma and Grace, Jones is a leading theologian who regularly contributes to scholarly and public discussions on matters of faith, social justice, and public life. 2017 president of the AAR, Eddie Glaude, provides opening remarks.

J. Bryan Hehir was the 2016 recipient of the Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Hehir is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also the Secretary for Health Care and Social Services in the Archdiocese of Boston. His research and writing focus on ethics and foreign policy and the role of religion in world politics and in American society. The Marty Award recognizes extraordinary contributions to the public understanding of religion. Dr. Shaun Casey, former U.S. Special Representative for Religion and Global Affairs at the United States State Department and current professor of the practice in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, dialogues with Professor Hehir at the Forum. Michael Kessler, of Georgetown University, presides. This forum was recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of religion on Sunday, November 20, in San Antonio, Texas. The 2017 AAR Martin E. Marty Award Winner will be announced by the end of summer 2017.

A companion to our last episode, which focused on what students can do to prepare for nonacademic careers, this podcast highlights how religious studies faculty and graduate programs can create a variety of career paths for their students. In recent years as the job market for tenure-track academic positions has tightened and the use of contingent faculty has exploded, increasing numbers of graduate degree seekers are intending to pursue nonacademic careers. While some areas of study present obvious nonacademic options, for scholars in the humanities, nonacademic career opportunities and the best preparation for them may not be obvious and religious studies faculty are exploring how graduate programs can—and should—prepare all alumni for multiple employment outcomes. This panel brings together faculty members from a variety of institutions to discuss some of the problems confronting their students and their programs as more people turn—by necessity and by choice—to nonacademic career paths. Panelists: - Cristine Hutchison-Jones, Administrative Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School - Martin Kavka, Professor of Religion, Florida State University - Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion, Boston University - Kathryn McClymond, Professor of Religious Studies, Georgia State University - Sarah E. Fredericks, Assistant Professor of Environmental Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School This panel discussion was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 20, in San Antonio, Texas.

Worried about the job market? Thinking that a career in higher ed no longer matches your interests and goals? Or just wondering about options? The panelists in this discussion hold or are working on masters and doctoral degrees in a variety of religious studies and theology programs and talk about fields including: publishing and editing; freelance writing; nonprofits and foundations; government; religious communities; academic administration; and more. They discuss their own experiences of exploring nonacademic career options in the context of their graduate studies, and they suggest the ways faculty, departments, and the AAR might better support scholars as they consider careers beyond the academy. An insightful Q&A with the audience follows. Panelists: – Cristine Hutchison-Jones, Administrative Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School – Jana Riess, writer and editor – J. Shawn Landres, Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission and City of Santa Monica Social Services Commission – Natasha Mikles, PhD candidate, University of Virginia – Andrew Henry, PhD candidate, Boston University – Peter Manseau, Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the National Museum of American History – Robert N. Puckett, Director of Meetings at the American Academy of Religion This panel discussion was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 20, in San Antonio, Texas.

The presidential theme of the 2016 AAR Annual Meeting was "Revolutionary Love." The concept draws from various themes, traditions, and ideas. In this wildcard session, leading thinkers reflect on revolutionary love from nonviolence, queer, interreligious, and constructive theology perspectives. Karen Baker-Fletcher, Southern Methodist University, presiding Serene Jones, Union Theological Seminary, panelist Elaine Padilla, New York Theological Seminary, panelist John Thatamanil, Union Theological Seminary, panelist Thomas Oord, Northwest Nazarene University, panelist Catherine Keller, Drew University, respondent This audio was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 20, in San Antonio, Texas.