http://www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Current_Meeting/workshops.asp
Workshops at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Baltimore
Workshop Reservation Form (PDF)
Religion and Media Workshop
Persuasion’s Power: How Religion Makes its Publics
Friday, November 22, 11:00 am-6:00 pm
Presiding:
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, Auburn Media and University of North Carolina
Ann M. Burlein, Hofstra University
Kathleen Foody, College of Charleston
The 2013 Religion and Media Workshop will survey the mutually constitutive relationships between religion, publics, and the art of persuasion. The Religion and Media Workshop, one of the most popular sessions at the AAR annually, is a day-long seminar (lunch included) designed to foster collaborative conversation at the cutting edge of the study of religion, media, and culture. We invite you to join us for a master class on the productive power and possible pitfalls of persuasion.
This year's Religion and Media Workshop will explore the practices and histories of persuasion in the constitution of religious publics. We will pay particular attention to concerns within the academy over religion’s persuasive power and the push to police the boundaries of the secular study of religion.
Rather than taking the form of traditional paper sessions, the workshop will be structured as a participatory master class. Three to five readings will be circulated to participants before the event. In the morning, the workshop will draw out key terms from those readings and identify a series of questions to organize the day. Following lunch, journalists and media professionals will discuss the negotiation between persuasion and representation in their own practices of media production. Scholars in the field will then lead a conversation considering the relationship between persuasion, rhetoric, and the constitution of publics in Sikh traditions and American Evangelical communities. Finally, scholars will participate in a moderated Q & A examining Religious Studies and its anxious relationship to persuasion and the secular study of religion. We will return to our organizing questions at the end of the day and collectively assess the practice of persuasion in the study of religion.
Because of the nature of this collaborative workshop, it is essential that all participants commit to doing the readings ahead of time and prepare to participate in seminar-style conversation. The cost of the workshop is $60, which includes the entire day of sessions and lunch.
This master class will be led by:
Laila al-Arian, Producer for Fault Lines, current affairs program at Al-Jazeera English
Jason Bivins, Department of Philosophy and Religion, North Carolina State University
Tracy Fessenden, Department of Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Christian Lundberg, Department of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina
Arvind Mandair, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
Lisa Webster, co-editor of Religion Dispatches
The cost of the workshop is $60, which includes the entire day of sessions and lunch. Registration is limited to the first 75 participants.
Rethinking Islamic Studies Workshop
Teaching Islamic Studies: Key Topics and Best Practices
Friday, November 22, 1:00 pm-5:00pm
Presiding:
Danielle Abraham, Harvard University
Omid Safi, University of North Carolina
For 2013, the Rethinking Islamic Studies workshop will explore best practices for teaching undergraduates foundational topics in Islamic Studies: the Qur'an, gender, American Islam, and visual/literary culture.
Our focus will be pedagogical, exploring the practical aspects involved in enhancing student learning and critical thinking regarding essential topics in the study of Islam. How can students best grasp the complexity of multiple engagements with the Qur’anic text – as scripture, as literary inspiration, as performance? In teaching gender, what conceptual tools do students need to understand the profound variety of gendered lives? How can we facilitate students’ exploration of contested conversations about gender inequality across cultures in without reifying stereotypes of “oppressed Muslim women”? What historical and ethnographic material provokes students to develop an interpretive frame to understand American Islam as simultaneously Islamic and distinctly American? What are effective ways to introduce students to the visual and literary cultures of Islam that can build their analysis of the role that creative expression and aesthetics plays in the ongoing social formation of Islam?
The format will consist of presentations by experienced instructors combined with interactive small group discussion. Our aim is to provide an opportunity for reflection on effective teaching and student-centered learning. The workshop is intended both for graduate students and professors of Islamic studies, as well as scholars from other fields in religious studies who are looking to incorporate more Islam material in their courses.
The cost of the workshop is $30, which includes the entire afternoon of sessions and a coffee break. Registration limited to the first 60 participants.
Religion and Ecology Workshop
Mapping the Field of Religion and Ecology: Theories, Methods, and Future Directions
Friday, November 22, 1:45 PM –5:00 PM
The Religion and Ecology Group invites you to take part in a pre-AAR colloquium to survey and map the theoretical and methodological diversities within the field of religion and ecology. This research area is now robust with multiple avenues of research and activities, including many traditions, voices, theories, approaches, discourses, methodologies, and emphases. It is our goal to collectively discuss and assess where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going. This colloquium is envisioned as a participatory event designed both for those who have long contributed to this groundbreaking work as well as those who are new to such scholarly conversations.
The goals of this session are as follows:
1. To map the intellectual terrain covered by scholars and activists, including those who initiated such scholarly conversations as well as those who are active in the present and diverse shaping of the field.
2. To analyze and identify the common theories and methodologies employed by scholars across the interdisciplinary and multi-religious landscape of the field of religion and ecology to date.
3. To articulate and explore pertinent questions, theories and methodologies, lacuna, and trajectories that may guide the development of the field in the twenty-first century.
It is our intent that in mapping the terrain, hearing from those who have contributed to the maturation of the field, and suggesting signposts which point the way forward, that we can foster a more timely, focused, and fruitful scholarly conversation for future study in the field. We hope that you will join this conversation, bringing your own expertise and energy.
Panelists:
Lucas Johnston, Wake Forest University
Barbara A.B. Patterson, Emory University
Matthew Riley, Drew University
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Seattle University
The cost of the workshop is $30, which includes the entire afternoon of sessions and a coffee break. Registration limited to the first 75 participants.
Theological Education Workshop
Teaching Theology in a Global and Transnational World
Friday, November 22, 1:45 PM –5:00 PM
Kwok Pui Lan, Episcopal Divinity School, Presiding
Theological educators are called upon to educate leaders of faith communities who are prepared to lead in a globalized world. Although there has been a growing body of literature on global theology and the construction of theological doctrines from an intercultural or global perspective, theology is still largely taught in the same old way, which privileges the European and Euro-American traditions. This workshop aims to equip theological educators to teach in a way that always remembers that we no longer teach merely in and to a national context alone but that we live in a global and transnational world.
Some of the questions we will explore include: What are the possible “sources” for a global theology? How can we teach theology bearing in mind the cultural diversity within the long tradition of Christian thought? Whose voices are missing, and how do we pay attention to the power dynamics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the classroom?
What are the successful pedagogies and best practices to promote students’ global consciousness and prepare them as global citizens? Where today are connections being made by Christians and people of faith from multiple settings that might have potential for raising (new) theological questions? How can we approach the task of teaching theology in a global context from the perspective of comparative theology? How shall we situate global theological voices in pedagogy and across the curriculum? The first panel will uncover key issues concerning challenges of teaching theology in a global and transnational world. The second panel will offer pedagogical tools and approaches, with examples drawn from the classroom and beyond. There will be ample opportunities for collaborative reflection, sharing pedagogical resources, and building collegial networks of support.
Panelists:
William A. Dyrness, Fuller Theological Seminary
Miguel A. De La Torre, Iliff School of Theology
Eleazar S. Fernandez, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
John Thatamanil, Union Theological Seminary
Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago
Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, Loyola Marymount University
Teresia Mbari Hinga, Santa Clara University
The cost of the workshop is $30, which includes the entire afternoon of sessions and a coffee break. Registration limited to the first 75 participants.
SBL & AAR SORAAAD Workshop
Methodologies and the Analytical Study of Religion
Friday, November 22, 1:00 PM –5:00 PM
https://sites.google.com/site/religiondisciplineworkshop/
For 2013, the Study of Religion as an Analytical Discipline (SORAAAD) Workshop will focus on the selection, design, and implementation of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, as well as responsible ways to use quantitative and qualitative research generated by other scholars outside of the study of religion.
SORAAAD’s Methodologies and the Analytical Study of Religion will be of particular interest for graduate students and established scholars who already enact social science and critical humanities research methodologies, who want to implement newer or different methodologies, or who need to integrate existing social science and critical humanities research outside of religion (Sociology, Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Critical and Social Theories) into their research design, data acquisition and analysis.
The full program with speakers and readings will be posted here: https://sites.google.com/site/religiondisciplineworkshop/
Registration is Free
To Register, please place "SORAAAD - 2013 - Registration" in the subject line of an email to CTDR.Group@gmail.com.
In the body of the email, please place your full name, institutional affiliation and some indication of academic status (graduate student, an adjunct instructor, independent scholar or professor etc.)
The SORAAAD Workshop is co-sponsored by:
SBL's Ideological Criticisms of the Bible Group, the Bible and Cultural Studies Section, Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship Consultation and
AAR's Critical Theories and Discourses on Religion Group, Cultural History of the Study of Religion Group and the Sociology of Religion Group.
Registration limited to the first 45 participants.
