Schedule

Please click here for the most up-to-date
version of the conference schedule.

 

Friday, October 12

All Friday Events are at the John Evans Alumni Center

 3:00 – 4:30  PM           REGISTRATION
Please pickup your conference materials.

 4:30 – 5:00  PM            WELCOME ADDRESS
Kenneth Seeskin (Department Chair), Cristina Traina (Director of Graduate Studies),
and Matthew J. Cressler (Conference Chair).

5:00 – 6:30  PM             FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Thomas Csordas (University of California, San Diego), “Across the Threshold of Possession”
Introduced by:  Justine Howe

6:30 – 7:30  PM            RECEPTION
Please join us for hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

Saturday, October 13

Saturday’s Events are in Two Locations: Harris Hall & the McCormick Tribune Center

8:00  –  8:30  AM            CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST  (Harris 108)

8:30 – 10:30  AM            SESSION 1 – TRANSFORMATIVE TRANSGRESSIONS  (Harris 108)
How can a religious tradition create opportunity to challenge existing social norms?

  • Jeff Fitzkappes (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago), Towards a Christian Adoption of Transhumanism
  • Trevor Burrows (Purdue University), Battling Spiritual Illiteracy: Interfaith Activity, Religious Education, and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 1920-1945
  • Laura McTighe (Columbia University), Chicago’s Transcendent Third: Lived Religion in a Time of Mass Incarceration
  • Moderator: Candace Kohli (Northwestern University)

10:30 –10:45 AM            COFFEE BREAK  (Harris 108)

10:45 –12:45 PM             SESSION 2A: TRANSNATIONAL TRANSITIONS  (Harris 108)
How do religions engage with political borders?

  • Jenna Nigro (University of Illinois at Chicago), Religion, Education, and Authority in Colonial Senegal, 1830s-1860s
  • Guy Emerson Mount (University of Chicago), When the Prophet Meets the Prophetic: Persian Mysticism, Black Activism, and The Transnational Journey of African American Lived Religion
  • Kate Peisker (Yale University), At the Edge of Catholic Europe: The Stolen Soul in 19th-Century Galicia
  • Ryan E. Gillen (Valdosta State University), “The howl of the anti-Mormons was to be expected”: How conflict, policy, and culture led the Latter-Day Saints to Mexico
  • Moderator: Kate Dugan (Northwestern University)

 10:45 –12:45 PM             SESSION 2B: TRANSLATION & TRANSMISSION  (MTC 3119)
How do religious texts and language mediate between traditions and their changing circumstances?

  • P.J. Johnston (University of Iowa), Comparative Theology and the Globalization of Catholicism: The Role of Translation
  • Lucas Taylor Carmichael (University of Chicago), Transmission, Translation, and Transformation of the Daode jing
  • Michael Heyes (Rice University), The Translation, Transformation, and Transportation of Demons in the Life of St. Antony
  • Corey Hackworth (The Ohio State University), Words are for Cutting: The Unifying Power of Name-Calling
  • Moderator: Jennifer A. Callaghan (Northwestern University)

 12:45 – 2:15  PM             LUNCH  (on your own)
Please see the conference website for a list of local restaurants and cafés.

 2:15  –  4:15  PM            SESSION 3A: TRANSPORTED TRADITIONS  (Harris 108)
How does movement between cultures impact the development of religious traditions?

  • David Scott (Boston University), American Mission Agencies as Transnational Corporations
  • Justin Stein (University of Toronto), Translating Transoceanic Transmissions, or Of Orishas and Reiki—Applying Lessons from the Afro-Atlantic to the Asian-Pacific
  • Rita Biagioli (University of Chicago), Hindu Summer Camps in the Diaspora and “Trans”-mitting Religious Values in an Altered Context
  • Moderator: Justine Howe (Northwestern University)

 2:15  –  4:15  PM            SESSION 3B: TRANSVERSE SPACES  (MTC 3119)
How do religions create or reconfigure their places in the world?

  • Jason M. Sprague (University of Iowa), Where the Hell is Cross Village?: Crossing Boundaries and Sacred Space
  • Sarah Riccardi (Missouri State University), Living Between Heaven and Russia: Evoking and Embodying Spiritual Nostalgia in Ozarkian Eastern Orthodoxy
  • Justin M. Doran (University of Texas at Austin), Hogueras Santas: Transnational Sacrifice in a Pentecostal Church
  • Julie Knoller TelRav (The New School for Social Research), Thresholds of Jewish Identity
  • Moderator: Ariel Schwartz (Northwestern University)

 4:15  –  4:30  PM            COFFEE BREAK  (McCormick Tribune Center Forum)

 4:30  –   6:00   PM         SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESSS  (McCormick Tribune Center Forum)
Thomas A. Tweed (University of Texas at Austin), Prefixes and Prepositions: On the Study of Religion in Motion
Introduced by:  Brian J. Clites

 6:00 – 7:30  PM           RECEPTION (Harris 108)
Please join us for hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

 

 Sunday, October 14

All Sunday Events are in Harris Hall

8:00  –  9:00  AM            CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST   (Harris 108)

9:00 – 11:00  AM            SESSION 4: TRANSMUTED BODIES  (Harris 108)
How do religious imaginations and practices constrain or expand the possibilities of the human body?

  • Jessica Chen (Stanford University), Body and Practice in Chinese Islamic Cosmology: Liu Zhi’s Explanation of the Five Practices
  • Emily Fortune Hancock (University of Chicago), Sin and Self-Pollution: Negotiating Borders among the Body, Society, and God in Early America
  • “Ryan” John T. Adams (University of California, Santa Barbara), Transformers: Chinese Self-Cultivation Transformed in Taiwan’s Falun Gong
  • Moderator: Victoria Prussing (Northwestern University)

 11:00 – 12:30 PM           THIRD KEYNOTE ADDRESS  (Harris 108)
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Northwestern University), Dilemmas of Secular Power: Religion, Law, and Globalization
Introduced by: Ariel Schwartz