American Academy of Religion

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.

Bhrigupati Singh, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University, speaks about how his examination of the Sahariyas, a tribe living in extreme poverty in Northwest India, stretches and blurs the boundaries of religion and secularity in studying how the tribespeople reflect on questions of ethics, happiness, and quality of life. His work encourages scholars of religion—particularly those engaging with nonwestern traditions—to develop a comparative vocabulary that goes beyond Eurocentrism and Postcolonialism alike. Singh is the author of "Poverty and the Quest for Life: Spiritual and Material Striving in Rural India" (University of Chicago Press, 2015), which won the AAR's 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of analytical-descriptive studies.

Cornel West argues that pragmatism is the ideal philosophical view to address the ways in which ideas like race, gender and class are produced and redescribed in history. Pragmatism is ideal because it highlights history, context and problem solving. As a quintessentially American tradition, pragmatism’s canonical figures had not sufficiently wrestled with these quandaries in a way that would make sense to anyone who understood slavery, discrimination and segregation as problems worth solving. West’s "The American Evasion of Philosophy" (1989) focused on that insufficiency. For reasons that we explore in a panel devoted to his innovative text, West’s engagement with and expansion of the canon is worthy of the collective intellectual attention of those concerned with the persistence of problems that are best addressed when one evades quests for epistemic certainty. Panelists: Kevin Wolfe Clifton Granby Julius Crump Xavier Pickett Victor Anderson, Presiding This discussion was recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio, Texas, on November 23.

Julián Castro, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, speaks on housing, his childhood, and political action. Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado presides. This plenary session was recorded on November 21, 2016, in San Antonio, Texas, at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

This panel, comprised of leading theological voices working across traditions and communities, will explore manifestations of "the hatreds of our day," their origins, their relation to religious thought and practice, and varied strategies available to disrupt their power. Drawing out the connections between hatred directed towards Latinos, African Americans, and Muslims will be central. Panelists: Eddie S. Glaude Mayra Rivera Amir Hussain Cornel West, Presiding

Taking up the AAR's 2016 plenary theme of "Revolutionary Love," participants in this session join a conversation addressing concerns with Christian privilege in a scholarly organization dedicated to “critical approaches to the study of religion.” This panel brings together a diverse group of scholars to consider the concept of love as a public or political force. Whose conception of love prevails (or is allowed to prevail) in public discourse? Is there something exclusively Christian about the discourse of love? Are there analogues in other traditions? Is love a universal human value? What’s at stake among scholars of religion? Panelists: Amy M. Hollywood Russell T. McCutcheon Sarah Eltantawi David P. Gushee Arvind Sharma Mara Willard, Presiding This audio was recorded during the on November 21, 2016 during the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio, Texas.