http://www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Past_and_Future_Meetings/2001/abstracts.asp
2001 AAR Abstracts
A28
Panel: Academic Relations Task Force Special Topics Forum - The Study of Religion Counts: What We Know (and What We Don't) about the Shape of the Field
James B. Wiggins, Syracuse University, Presiding
From September 2000 to April 2001, department chairs and program heads in religion and theology at fully accredited colleges and universities across North America responded to the AAR's Census of Religion and Theology Programs supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. This special topics forum includes a report on what has been learned from the census about programs, faculty, and enrollments at the undergraduate level; a summary of the research design and data collection strategies deployed; reflections on what the data reveal about the state of the field; and a discussion of measures needed for filling lacunae in our knowledge. Questions from the floor will be especially invited. Panelists include Edward R. Gray, American Academy of Religion; Lance Selfa, National Opinion Research Center; Jonathan Z. Smith, University of Chicago; and Linell E. Cady, Arizona State University.
A29
Becoming Pilgrims: The Educational Pilgrimage As Active Learning Strategy in the Introductory World Religions Course
Susan E. Hill, University of Northern Iowa
This paper explores the use of the educational pilgrimage as an active learning strategy in the introductory world religions course. In designing this course, I chose the idea of pilgrimage as the thematic link between Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In an effort to respond to what I perceived to be a lack of student interest in this topic, I developed a class exercise that allowed us to become pilgrims for a day. In this paper, I explore what I see as both the successes and failures of becoming pilgrims. I suggest the value in moving from theory to practice in the classroom through active learning, as well as the difficulties of doing ritual in a public university setting. I also highlight the ways in which the classroom pilgrimage both exemplifies and contradicts some of Victor Turner's theoretical speculations about the nature and social function of pilgrimages.
A29
Experiential Learning in the World Religions Course
Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University
This presentation provides the rationale, structure, and student outcomes for an optional experiential learning project utilized in an introductory World Religions course. The context of the experiential learning project is a World Religions course, which also utilizes traditional learning methods of reading, writing, and taking written examinations. Some attention will be given to the objection that such a project trivializes the monastic tradition and leads to misunderstanding rather than accurate learning. The project consists of two weeks of lifestyle and daily practice, loosely based on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and other monastic traditions. Sample guidelines and practice schedules will be provided for instructors who will consider adapting the project to their teaching situation. With large numbers of students the project can be quite labor intensive. A strategy of supervision is provided to make effective supervision of the project manageable. A summary of student outcomes from recent semesters will be provided.
A29
Experiential Religious Education in the Context of World Civilization General Education
Richard M. Carp, Northern Illinois University
Watauga College is a residential freshman college that provides an integrated interdisciplinary humanities and social science core. In the second semester Cultures East and West, working with humanities and social science materials, uses the comparative method to study culture and history. In a section that uses India as a touchstone for comparison with "the West," five experiential units, integrated with readings, writing assignments and class discussions, help students encounter religious traditions in depth (Indic meditation, Early Christian footwashing, salat, seder, and a contemporary India festival). Beforehand students read and discuss a world history textbook, a world religions textbook, and primary sources from the time and tradition under consideration. They also investigate the material culture of the religion through in-class slide presentations and website searches of their own. Student and faculty responses to these experiential opportunities indicate that they significantly facilitate students' ability to understand religion both comparatively and in context.
A29
Oz, the NBA, and First-Born Syndrome: Challenges and Successes in the First Year of Teaching
Caryn Donna Riswold, Valparaiso University
At various points during my first year of teaching theology at a private liberal arts college, I have likened teaching to the experiences of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, John Stockton of the Utah Jazz, and a parent watching the joys and mistakes of her first attempts at parenting. Each of these images captures something essential to the experience of teaching theology, and allows us to think about the task of academic teaching as a reflective journey requiring brains, heart, and courage, a disciplined performance requiring more "off the court" time than game time, and a powerful position filled with authority and care. Through these three images, I will argue that teaching is a reflective journey in which we learn as much as we teach, a disciplined performance requiring skill and commitment, and a risky position involving excesses of joy and failure.
A29
Getting My Feet Wet: A First Hand Account of Teaching an Introductory Course in Religious Studies
Ann Herpel, Union Theological Seminary, New York City
Stephen Brookfield in Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher presents a model of four interconnecting lenses (autobiographical reflection, student experiences, colleagues' perceptions and literature) as the means to examine the assumptions informing teaching methods. In this paper I will utilize one lens -- a teaching journal that I have kept while teaching, for the first time, an introductory course in religious studies -- to analyze my pedagogy and engage audience participation as a collaborative exercise in exploring ways to structure and conduct introductory courses. As the primary source material for this paper, this journal records the textures and contours of this everyday experience as I work to become a "critically reflective" teacher while still being a student myself. My analysis and reflections are framed by broader questions about the goals of introductory courses and the ability of newly-minted teachers to meet those goals.
A30
Long-Distance Transmission of Buddhism from South Asia to the Silk Routes: New Evidence from Rock Drawings and Inscriptions in Northern Pakistan
Jason Neelis, Florida State University
Since the opening of the Karakorum Highway between the Northern Areas of Pakistan and Xinjiang province in western China, recent discoveries of Buddhist rock drawings and inscriptions written mostly in Indian and Iranian languages illuminate material contexts for long-distance transmission of Buddhism in a pivotal transit zone between South Asia and the Silk Routes during the first to eighth centuries CE. Capillary networks of trade and travel routes through upper Indus, Gilgit, and Hunza river valleys and over passes of the Karakorum, Hindu Kush and Himalaya mountains directly linked the northwestern borderlands of the Indian subcontinent with the southern branches of the Silk Routes in the Tarim Basin. In this transit zone where sufficient surplus resources were not initially available for supporting Buddhist institutions or building permanent monastic structures, travelers and local devotees drew Buddhist images on rocks and recorded their donations with graffiti inscriptions.
A30
The Civilization of Ancient Chorasmia and Buddhism
Vadim N. Yagodin, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekkistan
This paper deals with recent Russian/Uzbek excavation in Akshahane-kala in ancient Chorasmia. The archeological findings of the area show sign of the penetration of Buddhism into that region in the first half of the first century C.E. A clay Buddha or Boddhisattva statuette found in the region shows the influence of the northwest Indian or Gandharan stylistic features. This figure was described by the Russian scholars as Avalokiteshvara, and modeled and copied from a larger figure of the Boddhisatva. This Akshahane-kala figurines show that ancient Chorasmia was a part of the western Central Asian Buddhist culture which spread along the river Amu Darya. Dating and stylistic analysis show marked similarities with the Buddhist objects found in Kara-tepe and other regions surrounding Akshahane-kala.
A30
Mahayana Textual Production on the Silk Route
Joseph Walser, Tufts University
This paper addresses an important aspect of the rise of Mahayana on the Silk road between the first and fifth centuries -- namely the way in which Mahayanists propagated their sutras. The strategies of propagation of sutras, in light of other archaeological evidence, reveal the complex social construction of Mahayana in the early centuries of the Common Era. Indeed, the environment along the Silk Route provides a unique opportunity to study the relationship between manuscript production, inscriptional evidence, and Mahayana literature. Along the Silk Route there are three variables that have a bearing on the reproduction of texts. These variables are: the sectarian constitution of the monasteries, the patronage of monasteries by the laity, and the textual strategies of the Mahayanists themselves.
A30
Death, Burials, and the Afterlife in Buddhist Central Asia
Mariko Namba Walter, Harvard University
This paper examines death related issues, such as different kinds of burial practices, in relation to belief in the afterlife, from the pre-historic period to the onset and spread of Buddhism in Central Asia. There are several common features to be pointed out regarding the Buddhist Central Asian ideas of death, burials, and the afterlife.a) The common thread of belief in the afterlife, which could allude to Buddhism or non-Buddhist beliefs such as indigenous popular beliefs in souls; b) The significance of relics/bones as a sign of the preservation of afterlife; c) The wish for the continuation of socio-political power and wealth after death; d) The repeated emphasis on religious dedication or devotion even taking precedence over the physical body, which is indicated by the numerous murals of self mutilation for the sake of Buddhism in Tun-huang and other caves.
A30
Special Traits of Uighur Buddhism
Peter Zieme, Berlin Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Buddhism, and especially Mahayana Buddhism, among the Uighurs in the Turfan oasis was strongly dependent of Chinese Buddhism as it was flourishing in the neighboring oasis of Dunhuang. The major scriptures were not only translated from Chinese, but the Uighurs either incorporated some special features or transformed forms and/or ideas according to their gusto. As a kind of example the Maitreya hymns known from different manuscripts in alliterating verses or in prose will be scrutinized. Special attention will be given to the role of Maitreya in the confession texts. As already demonstrated by Jan Nattier, the Uighurs even created a special Confession sutra for the use among the lay people. The paper is foreseen as a brick for the future edifice of our knowledge how the Old Uighurs adopted Buddhism for their own.
A31
The Emperor's New Clothes: Old "Ism's" in the New Marriage Movement
Gloria H. Albrecht, University of Detroit Mercy
The Marriage Movement bills itself as "a grass-roots movement to strengthen marriage." However, its original sponsors are associated with professional counseling and academic institutions. Nonetheless, they claim to represent initiatives at the state and local levels that share a common concern about the increasing disregard for monogamous, life-long, heterosexual, legal marriages, committed to children. This marriage crisis has resulted in the disintegration of civil society as evidenced by poverty, crime, poor educational achievement, drug addiction, single parent families, and out-of-wedlock births. Social policies and legal reforms should explicitly support marriage, as defined, make divorce more difficult, and intentionally not support other family forms. This paper will locate the Marriage Movement within a conservative and neo-liberal perspective united by its unwillingness to critically evaluate the impact of changing economic forces on society and its families. From unacknowledged, economically privileged positions, the Marriage Movement repeats old 'isms of race, class, and gender.
A31
Hospitality and Housing: An Intersection of Theology and Social Crisis
Joseph S. Pettit, University of Chicago
This paper applies and extends Christine Pohl's recovery of hospitality as a Christian tradition to the affordable housing crisis as it now confronts our nation and one major metropolitan area in particular. The paper draws heavily on Pohl's recent book "Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition" and on research into affordable housing. Pohl's understanding of hospitality is applied to three concepts that are central to understanding the causes of and possible solutions to the affordable housing crisis: property, neighbor, and community. The paper argues that the fundamental obstacle to meaningful responses to the problem of housing is the "will of the people." Therefore, an emphasis on changing public will is necessary for effective solutions to the housing crisis. Pohl's retrieval of hospitality as a Christian tradition, it is argued, enables exactly such an attitudinal change.
A31
Do Converts to Deeply Religious, Alternative Communities Promote or Destroy Social Capital?
Erin E. Dufault-Hunter, University of Southern California
This paper briefly examines the link between radical personal transformation and faith, reviewing research on converts conducted across a variety of faith traditions, from Pentecostal Protestant to Nation of Islam. While the efficacy of religious conversion might be uncontroversial, the interface of government policies and faith-based initiatives certainly is not. For good reasons, many are suspicious of such governmental intrusions in an increasingly pluralistic democratic society. Should our policy regarding such initiatives be driven by our wish that the marginalized of society receive aid "by any means necessary," or by our desire to keep government and religion separate? The paper closes with the uneasy reflections of one Mennonite's efforts to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable desires.
A31
Vida Dutton Scudder on Character and the Cooperative Commonwealth
Elizabeth L. Hinson-Hasty, Union-PSCE
Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), a social gospeler, Episcopal laywoman, English professor at Wellesley College, and committed socialist, was deeply concerned about how a society based on competition affected character. This paper investigates her assessment of the negative effects of capitalism on character and her vision for a society oriented toward justice rather than production. Each social class had an ethic based upon their privilege or lack of it. After examining both the "ethics of privilege" and the "ethics of want," Scudder concluded that both fell far short of inspiring a community oriented toward God's justice. She envisioned a society that would benefit from a partnership between Christianity and socialism. In the cooperative commonwealth, as she called it, justice would replace rule by self-interest.
A32
Clothing As Monastic Identity in Late Antiquity: Examples from Shenoute's White Monastery
Rebecca Krawiec, Canisius College, State University of New York, Buffalo
Clothing was a visible means of establishing an ascetic identity in late antiquity. Many examples reveal the important link, rhetorically and visually, between clothing and ascetic identity, a link that becomes stronger in the institutionalized setting of communal monasticism. The abbot of the White Monastery, Shenoute, used clothing socially to establish uniform membership in the community. Rhetorically, a garment of Shenoute's first contaminated by blood and pus during a long illness and then destroyed by moths serves as the connecting metaphor for three letters written to quell a period of unrest in the monastery. Clothing, therefore, does not just signify monastic identity but also the spiritual status of that self, either pure or polluted. Whereas hagiographies, such as Macrina's, which present "successful" monastics, suggest that monastic deeds became proper clothing, here Shenoute plays with that expectation: the monks' clothing will reveal, through its contamination, the sins they cannot hide.
A32
Habits and Orders: Clothing and Medieval Status Markers
Mary Meany, Siena College
In medieval Europe clothing functioned as a marker of status. The habit of the professed religious indicated where the wearer belonged in the social network. Authors of religious Rules were as aware as were the authors of sumptuary laws of the importance of clothing both for setting men and women religious apart from other members of society, and for indicating their relative positions among other professed religious. Beginning with an examination of the Rule of the Friars Minor and the "Augustinian Rule," this paper uses documentary, literary, and visual evidence about religious clothing to explore two questions about professed religious life in Italy and England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The first question is, what does a study of religious clothing tell us about how medieval Christians understood "Religious Orders"? Examining questions about who wore what, when, where, and why, brings us to realize how ambiguous the concept of "order" was.
A32
"A Silly Poor Gospel": Quaker 'Plain Dress' in the Seventeenth-Century
Catherine Tinsley Tuell, Claremont Graduate University
Before she died in 1703, Margaret Fell Fox engaged in one last spiritual battle that concerned the imposition of "plain dress" upon the Quaker community. Denouncing it as a legalism that encroached on the community's Meetings, she framed the controversy over "plain dress" as a choice between spiritual life and spiritual death. I argue in this paper the conflict was one of differences in ideology between material pietists and spiritual pietists and was ultimately a struggle between those who emphasized material clothing versus spiritual clothing. I have used Pierre Bourdieu's principles of "field, habitus, and cultural capital" in my analysis to establish why the former prevailed over the latter. The study of "plain dress" provides a fresh approach by which we can examine the much larger issue of how Quaker piety was re-fashioned in the late-seventeenth century.
A32
"As In a Mirror": Reflections of 'Savage' and 'Civil' Bodies in Early New England
Martha L. Finch, Southwest Missouri State University
In 1674, Daniel Gookin, supervisor of Indian missions in the MassachusettsBay Colony, described the New England native people as "mirrors," reflecting images of "savage beastliness"-what colonists might have been, or might become, if they neglected their civilized breeding. Historians of missions have noted the crucial link between Christianization and civilization, but have not explored in detail the alteration of native body practices (e.g., cutting the hair, no longer greasing the body, wearing English clothing) as the primary tool of the civilizing process. The native body encoded multiple layers of meanings for Puritan colonists, reflecting both savagery and civilization, beastliness and humanness, immorality and godliness. This paper highlights human bodies as the initial and crucial site of cultural contact, exchange, and change by investigating the theological and philosophical impetus behind the EnglishPuritan drive to alter native bodies and the meanings given those alterations by missionaries and Indians.
A33
Panel: Author Meets Critics: Grant Wacker's Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture
Albert G. Miller, Oberlin College, Presiding
Randall Balmer, Barnard College, Columbia University
Edith Blumhofer, Wheaton College
Rudy V. Busto, Stanford University
Ann Taves, Claremont School of Theology
Grant Wacker, Duke University, Responding
This session brings together a group of distinguished scholars of Holiness and Pentecostal traditions and of religion in early America to discuss Grant Wacker's new book on early Pentecostalism. The book examines a range of elements of early Pentecostal culture and is particularly concerned with the daily lives, experiences and voices of individual men and women.
A34
Autonomy and Heteronomy in Morality: Kant and Levinas
James DiCenso, University of Toronto
Kant draws mainly upon the Christian tradition, and Levinas upon the Jewish, yet each seeks to articulate a religious dimension focused on ethics. For Kant morality is synonymous with autonomy; yet, a dimension of heteronomy, a need for otherness, appears in Kant's ethical-religious vision. The indications of other regard in Kant are brought to fruition by Levinas' ethic of heteronomy (which also emphasizes responsible subjectivity). Heteronomy does not mean subservience to a fixed set of codes -- it is the human other, and the responsibility that emerges in the face-to-face relation, that humanizes me as an ethical subject. Here, Levinas offers a corrective to the potentially solipsistic dimensions of Kantian ethical autonomy. At the same time, since for Kant becoming ethical also entails an ethical commonwealth, the two thinkers are not simply in opposition. In this regard, issues concerning the other as individual other, and as social, will be discussed.
A34
From Ethics to Faith: Kant and Levinas on the Ineluctable Question
Tirdad Derakhshani, University of Pennsylvania
Richard J. Bernstein has written of a "Cartesian anxiety" -- the demand for foundation -- that pervades modern epistemology. Does not the same anxiety lead us to ask: does morality need faith? This paper will explore this anxiety by comparing the ethics of Kant and Lévinas. I point to the similarity of their positions - both insist on the primacy of ethics to religion and yet both derive a religious moment from ethics. I will argue that for both, ethics does need faith, but that they have radically different definitions of faith. I hold that while Kant's postulates shore up ethical action by making the demands of the moral law seem possible and thus rational to fulfill, Lévinas introduces the concepts of trace and illeity in his description of the ethical event in order to highlight the instability of that event-- they serve to underscore its lack of ground.
A34
Faith in Karma: The Justification of Moral Action in Sāntarakṣita and Kamalaṣīla
Sara McClintock, Carleton College
This paper examines the role of faith in the justification of moral actions (karman) in the philosophical thought of Sāntarakṣita and Kamalaṣīla, two eighth-century Buddhists working in the epistemological stream of Indian Buddhism. The fundamental ethical problem that these thinkers face is how a judicious person (prekṣāvant) can justify any particular moral act when the reputed positive results of that act are experienced only in future lives. While some Buddhists might argue for the necessity of finding an Ideal Observer to act as an authority, and others for the necessity of employing a special faith-based form of inference (āgamāsritānumāna) to resolve this problem, I argue that in the context of the justification of moral action, Sāntarakṣita and Kamalaṣīla embrace neither approach. Instead, they maintain the justification of moral acts to be grounded in a kind of reasoned confidence (abhisaṃpratyaya) that can, and should, be gained through individual, empirical observation alone.
A34
Faith, Hope, and Normativity in Sartre's (unpublished) Morale et Histoire
Matthew C. Ally, Temple University
The unpublished text of Jean-Paul Sartre's Morale et histoire presents what is arguably Sartre's clearest and most systematic phenomenological inquiry into the nature and significance of ethical norms and moral praxis, and lays out what is without question his most rigorous dialectical account of the historical efficacy of morality as such. In this paper, I argue that, though left largely unthematized in the text of Morale et histoire, faith and hope are integral elements of the existential logic of morality that Sartre so carefully elucidates, as they are of any properly dialectical-phenomenological account of morality -- Sartrean or otherwise. Drawing on Sartre's signature descriptions of concrete moral events, and with specific emphasis on the experiences of moral transgression and political resistance, I attempt to clarify the foundational [sic] and generative role of faith and hope in the lived constitution of moral conduct.
A35
An Ethnographer in Disguise: Comparing Self and Other in Mughal India
Aditya Behl, Princeton University
Are religious beliefs like languages? Can they be classified, translated, analyzed, placed in hierarchies, genealogies, and taxonomies - if so, what do these operations imply about the enterprise of comparing religions? An entry into these issues is afforded by an unjustly ignored text of Mughal India, the Parsi Dabistan-i Mazahib ("The School of Religious Faiths"), a seventeenth-century Persian account of all the religious sects contemporary to the author. A Zoroastrian from Patna, Mubad Shah frequently adopted a Shia Muslim identity in public. Members of his group often dressed up as men of other religious groups and infiltrated their ranks. They gathered information about these sects, all the while practicing an esoteric brand of Zoroastrianism themselves. Representations of others include translations of their most important texts into Persian, as well as detailed descriptions of their appearance and practices. The results of these religious masquerades are presented in the Dabistan.
A35
"Go Tell the Hindu and His Gods": Images of Hindus and Hinduism in Muslim Urdu Poetry
Christopher Lee, Iowa State University
It is often said that poetry is the most favored form of expression for Muslim speakers of the Urdu language in North India. In spite of its reputation as syrupy love poetry, Urdu poetry is an important method for Urdu-speaking Muslims in North India to attempt to construct, negotiate and critique meaningful understandings of the social and political circumstances in which they find themselves. Muslim poets often use poetry to express their relations to Hindus and Hinduism. Perhaps as is to be expected, poets do not speak in one voice: Hindus appear in poetry as the seductive beloved as well as the feared destroyer. This paper will explore some of the myriad images of Hindus and Hinduism in the Urdu poetry of Muslims from the Hindu pilgrimage city of Varanasi, India.
A35
The Dasam Granth in Sikh History
Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College
The Dasam Granth is an anthology attributed to the tenth and final human guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh. Since its compilation in the 18th century, its status and interpretation have varied dramatically. Some have placed it on near-equal footing with the Guru Granth Sahib, while others have rejected some or all of it as an authentic Sikh text because of its reference to what is deemed Hindu mythology. While the authorship and authenticity of the text remain in dispute, the Dasam Granth has remained important to many Sikhs. The problematic nature of certain portions of the text has led Sikh commentators to propose a variety of interpretive strategies. This presentation will focus on passages which have troubled commentators, particularly those which retell "Hindu" stories. What do these passages reveal about Sikh theology and practice throughout the tradition's history?
A35
"The Third Path": Eighteenth-Century Khalsa Sikh Discourses of Identity and Difference
Jeevan Singh Deol, University of Cambridge
This paper is concerned with eighteenth-century Khalsa Sikh discourses about Khalsa identity and the place of the Khalsa in the religious world of north India. These sustained articulations of Khalsa identity emphasized the distinctiveness of the Khalsa, defining a sacred and ritual universe that superseded both the Khalsa's own Nanakpanthi roots and Hinduism and Islam, here defined as textually based religions. This 'othering' of the two major constructs in the north Indian religious episteme created a discourse of soteriological supremacy and political power that predicates Khalsa identity on the destruction of Muslim religion and Muslim/Mughal political power. The argument of the paper thus interrogates current scholarly constructions of syncretic or fluid premodern north Indian religious identities.
A35
When Dauji and Jakheiya Speak, People Listen: Legitimizing Narratives of Deity Manifestations in Sixteenth-Century Braj Devotion
A. Whitney Sanford, Iowa State University
When Dauji (the local name of Balarama, a Naga) and Jakheiya (a yaksa) revealed themselves in Braj, they left little to the imagination about who should serve them and how it should be done. Their initial demands resulted in seva patterns and lineages that still exist today. Devotees repeat the narratives of these deities' emergence, and these stories which are still told today reveal the (continuing) negotiations over control of the sites. This paper investigates these stories to see what they have to tell us about the relationships and contests between these local traditions and a Vaishnava elite. This analysis also presents an opportunity to question the language we use to describe the groups themselves and their interactions.
A36
The Khuṭba and the Transmission of Culture in Medieval al-Andalus and the Maghreb
Linda G. Jones, University of California, Santa Barbara
Recently the Islamic sermon (khuṭba) has begun to receive some scholarly attention. Yet a serious enquiry into the khuṭba's role in the transmission of Muslim culture and communal identity remains to be undertaken. This paper aims to demonstrate the khuṭba's role in the construction and transmission of medieval Islamic cultural identities in al-Andalus and the Maghreb. I examine the sermons of Ibn Marzūq, Ibn `Abbād of Ronda, and Qadi `Iyāḍ, and several anonymous 14th- and 15th-century Andalusian sermonaries. A close reading of these sermons reveals that Muslims utilized the preaching event to shape their communal self-definition and to reproduce and maintain their cultures. Using cultural studies and ritual theories, this analysis deciphers the discrete components of the khuṭba to explore how myths are disseminated and unfold in social and historical contexts. The khuṭba thus provides a venue for examining the relationship between religion and culture, between mythic discourse and cultural identity.
A36
The Transformation of Medieval Qur'an Exegesis
Walid Saleh, Middlebury College
A study of the commentary of al-Tha'labī (d. 435 A. H.) known as al-Kashf reveals that it played a decisive role in the development of the genre of Quranic exegesis. A close reading of the work in comparison with what came before it and what was produced after it leaves no doubt that it was the main source for commentators in the medieval period. The innovations al-Tha'labī introduced and the solutions he offered to the problems facing the craft of Quranic exegesis will prove so successful that they were adopted without hesitation and resulted in a radical shift in the way commentators approached their work. I will discuss few verses as an example and show how al-Tha'labī managed to achieve his aims working inside a tradition that at first look was difficult to change.
A36
The Structure of Sacrality in the Arabic Literary Imagination: Djughrafiya and Faḍa'il As Prosaic Maps of Medieval Baghdad and Jerusalem
Margaret A. Leeming, University of California, Santa Barbara
What becomes clear in medieval Arabic literature is that the contest for centrality is one important element in the complex web that makes a 'sacred center.' A cursory examination of Faḍa'il and geographical literature, two medieval genres that constitute prosaic maps of medieval cities, leads to questions about how literature contributes to the building or production of sacrality and the ensuing contest over rival claims to centrality. An examination of a single city could inform several categories that emerge out of these genres; however determining what differentiates Jerusalem and Baghdad--two cities compared to paradise and called the naval of the world--could provide a more richly informed analysis. The discussion of these cities as either inherited or created space explores a category within the structure of these genres that sheds light on strategies used by medieval authors to portray a sacred city.
A36
The Origin and Development of the Chinese Muslim Madrasa in Ming-Qing Era
Yuan-Lin Tsai, Nanhua University
My research starts from the question how the Hui people can maintain their own Islamic belief and ethno-cultural consciousness, and have not been assimilated to the Han majority for many generations in China. I consider that a key factor is the Hui intellectual who developed an educational institution to cultivate the young generation of Hui to be aware of their own religious tradition. This research attempts to reconstruct the historical process of the development of the Chinese Muslim madrasa (jing-tang in Chinese) in order to illuminate the origin of the Islamic revival movement of the Hui intellectual in the Ming-Qing era and further clarify some historical questions regarding the cultural accommodation and identification of the Hui people in China.
A37
Re-Performing "Imitatio Christi"
Karen Trimble Alliaume, Lewis University
Feminist theologians critique both Jesus' maleness and his suffering as problematic in relation to women, arguing that traditional christologies contribute to the oppression of women. To the extent that feminist theology continues to assert that women must "resemble Christ" in order to be saved, they remain indebted, I argue, to a christological "economy of imitation" in which Jesus Christ is seen as the norm that individuals must resemble, and from which resemblance women are precluded. Dissolving the intransigence of this imitative economy by employing Judith Butler's deconstruction of the sexed body, I argue for a shift in christological discourse to a "performative" economy, in which both Jesus Christ and "women" are understood as performed in community.
A37
Jesus As Dust and Spirit: An Incarnational Theology
Karen Baker-Fletcher, Claremont School of Theology
This paper examines an incarnational understanding of Jesus as not only a human embodiment of God but as a dusty, earthy, embodiment of God if we turn to the account of Adam (earth-creature) being created out of the dust of the earth in the book of Genesis. What does this mean for us as Christians as we consider our relationship not only to God but to nature? Approaching this question from specifically American and African American religious and theological perspectives, as well as classical Christian sources, the paper contrasts tentative approaches to the presence of God in nature (Edwards, Emerson)with a more integrative, constructive perspective that draws on (Hurston, Dash, Whitehead, and credal christological formulations. This constructive project draws on these resources to develop one possible "womanist," "eco-theological" approach to constructive work in christology.
A37
Redeeming "No Memory": Crucifixion and Traumatic Absence
Serene Jones, Yale University
The paper proposes an aesthetic theology of "the cross" which brings the insights of feminist and trauma theory into conversation with classical understandings of the "salvific power" of the crucifixion. In particular, I am interested in exploring the theological significance of violence which not only cannot be spoken but which, because of this devastating power, escapes memory. I want to explore the question: how does God not only redeem history, but also redeem "no history"-the chasms of traumatic time. I contend that the cross need not be interpreted as valorizing violence and human suffering; to the contrary, the devastating force of traumatic violence is exposed and condemned on the cross. In the "time between" crucifixion and resurrection, we find theological resources for a feminist reconception of the relation between redemption and time.
A37
Something About Nothing: A Feminist Reading of Creation
Catherine E. Keller, Drew University
The classical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo takes shape amidst sexually charged postulations of divine omnipotence. Its discursive dominance asserts itself against a fluid, feminized and queered chaos (e.g., Irenaeus' " tears and sweat of Achamoth").Yet something else takes place in Augustine's Confessions. While presuming the ex nihilo, Augustine's "cry from the depths," rather than suppressing or demonizing the tehom of Gen 1.2, sublimates it/her as "upper waters," "mother most dear," God's "wife." In this exegetical perplexity, Augustine affirmed "multiple true interpretations." Opening that multiplicity into Bhaktin's "sea of heteroglossia, " I read tehom as trace of a primordial "différance" (Derrida) nonetheless at odds with poststructuralist proscriptions of "depth." Renegotiating the conflicting feminine imagery--from Wesley's "impregn'd abyss" to Barth's "monstrous sphere"-- bounding the doctrine of creation, I construct a feminist alternative, arguably more biblical than the ex nihilo.
A38
Panel: The Right to Family Planning, Contraception, and Abortion in World and Indigenous Religions
Andrea Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz, Presiding
Daniel C. Maguire, Marquette University
Sadiyya Shaikh, Temple University
Christine E. Gudorf, Florida International University
Arvind Sharma, McGill University
Laurie Zoloth, San Francisco State University
Mary C. Churchill, University of Colorado, Boulder
Family Planning--meaning contraception with abortion as a backup when necessary--should not be controversial. That many world religions should have strong pro-natalist strains is not surprising. These restrictive views have been well published, particularly by the Vatican. What is less well known is that there are pro-choice views in the world religions alongside the no-choice views. A group of scholars specializing in ten world religions have launched a project to show the solid, thoroughly orthodox pro-family-planning positions in the world's major and indigenous religions. Our scholars show that this view is grounded in the spiritual and moral insights of the world's religions in order to counter the oppressive and distorting positions of the religious right in all these religions. A panel of scholars will present our findings, focusing on Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and American Indian religious traditions.
A39
Ellison's Blues: Tragicomic Transcendence in an Absurd and Hopeful World
Beth Eddy, Princeton University
This paper examines Ralph Ellison's reflections on the role of transcendence in spiritual life. I analyze Ellison's debts to and differences from understandings of transcendence he inherits from his theological, philosophical, and vernacular cultural roots. Ellison takes the blues to be a tragicomic means of spiritual transcendence of both sin and suffering. He explains both what he borrows and what he chooses to leave behind from more purely tragic and comic spiritualities, and why he takes what he takes and leaves what he leaves. His vision of the tragicomic blues bears family resemblances. Cornel West's predominantly tragic vision and Richard Rorty's more comic understanding of transcendence. Ellison makes critical appropriations from both tragic and comic genres, embracing a religious understanding of transcendence as a sacred human need while subjecting his own vision to various secular modes of criticism he also values.
A39
A Tragic-Liberation Model: Hurston's Perspective on Life and Systematic Evil
F. Douglas Powe, Emory University
This essay explores how Zora Neale Hurston's, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," moves African-American theology toward a tragic understanding of life. The nature of human existence means being vulnerable to our world. Too often in classical religious thought, human vulnerability becomes synonymous with sin. A doctrine of the fall intimates that because humans are fallen, evil can occur in their lives. The difference between humans are fallen and humans are vulnerable creates a different sensibility on perceiving human sin and suffering. I posit that, compellingly, Hurston's work explores human vulnerability from an African-American perspective, focusing on the relationship between God, the individual, the inter-human, and the community. Hurston pushes African-American theology toward a tragic understanding of life, while maintaining a strong emphasis on the importance of systemic evil. I contend that Hurston is unique as she provides a way to take seriously human vulnerability and the systemic nature of evil.
A39
James Baldwin: Interpreter of Tongues
Yolanda Pierce, University of Kentucky
James Baldwin's fiction, like Flannery O'Connor's writing, is "Christ haunted." Throughout his career as writer and political activist, Baldwin could not escape his Fire-Baptized Holiness Church tradition. Like this religious expression, bound by the verbal and written language of the Bible and its believers' oral testimony, Baldwin writes and speaks "in tongues"; that is, he utilizes a special, ancient and sacred language closed to outsiders and "unbelievers." Baldwin possesses a sacred spiritual and literary gift of interpreting tongues. He takes this religious language and gives his readers a glimpse into "the day of Pentecost." At great risk and personal cost, Baldwin interprets those tongues for those whom the language of Pentecost is unknown. This essay uses Baldwin's 1978 novel Just Above My Head, to explore how Baldwin, as author/homileticist, interprets a spiritual language for his readers -- one that has sustained and nourished people of African descent living in America.
A39
Baldwin and Lorde As Theological Resources for the Celebration of Darkness
Robin Hawley Gorsline, Brooklyn, NY
The writings and lives of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde are resources in the effort to undermine the valorization of lightness over darkness. I offer readings of Baldwin and Lorde as resources for spiritual healing and as correction against Bible-centric theologies. They may be considered meta-theologians because they transcend the boundaries of traditional white supremacist and heterosupremacist theological discourse, while maintaining a focus on liberative moral values and spiritual life. Three themes in their works draw our attention: their responses to the admonition to "never trust white people," their treatments of human difference, and their honesty about sexuality. Baldwin and Lorde show us that celebrating darkness offers hope for saving humanity from destructive hierarchies based on supremacies of race, sex and gender. Their celebration of sexuality and gender can widen the worldview of Black Theology, and their racial pride and candor offer a corrective to feminist and queer theologies.
A40
Receptivity, Donation, and the Imagination: Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Imago Dei
Philip D. Kenneson, Milligan College
This paper explores the theological fruitfulness of the concept of the imago Dei by bringing together two important, but largely discrete, emphases in recent Christian theology. One is the relatively recent recovery of the social character of the human person, a view rooted in Trinitarian accounts of donation and receptivity. The second emphasis concerns the vital and indispensable role imagination plays in human life. Whereas earlier understandings of imagination pitted it against reason, contemporary discussions argue for its constitutive character. Moreover, the best theological reflection to date on the imagination has tried to hold together both its receptive and constructive character. This suggests that the dynamic at the heart of human imagination may itself reflect something of the Trinitarian dynamic of donation and receptivity. Such a view of the imago Dei has the potential to illuminate (among other things) in what sense human beings are capable of perichoretic relations.
A40
The Alpha and the Omega and Everything in Between: An Ecumenical Treatment of the Imago Dei
Jennifer Bader, Catholic University of America
This paper explores the interpretations of the biblical concept of the imago Dei in the works of selected contemporary authors from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions and highlights the strengths that each brings to a contemporary understanding of the imago Dei. In particular, this paper discusses what constitutes the imago Dei within humanity (Roman Catholic tradition); Christ as the imago Dei and humanity as the imago Christi (Orthodox tradition); and the imago Dei as a task for the moral life (both traditions). This paper explores the implications of these interpretations of the imago Dei for the fields of theological anthropology, moral theology, and Christology. In conclusion, this paper demonstrates that these interpretations of the imago Dei can be brought together into an understanding of the imago Dei that is more than the sum of its parts and theologically treats humanity more comprehensively than any one of the interpretations alone.
A40
Love's Reflection: Retrieving a Victorine Pneumatology of the Imago Dei
Maurice Lee, Yale University
A "pneumatological deficit" in the doctrine of the imago Dei is addressed by looking to Richard of St. Victor's proposal that the Spirit is distinguished within the Trinity by a particular form of love, amor debitus (owed or returned love), that it is precisely this love by which human persons are characterized, and therefore that in this sense it is the Spirit to whom human persons are conformed in "similitude." It will be argued that such a pneumatological retrieval of "returned" love as an aspect of the image of God in human beings (1) opens a way to make sense of the claim that the gift of the Spirit to us is the being of the Spirit in us, and (2) links the "perfect" love of the new creation to the "transformative" love of Christ's cross as its eschatological goal.
A40
Human Community As an Image of the Holy Trinity
Nonna Verna Harrison, Cambridge University
While many Eastern and Western theologians agree that human community is created to image the Trinity, an apparent impasse arises over Orthodox belief in the Father's role as source of divine being and activity. Some Westerners regard divine essence or a structure of relationality as ultimate source, to avoid making the Trinity a model for human patriarchal oppression. Easterners reaffirm the Father's "monarchy," so that the ultimate principle is a person, not something impersonal. My paper retrieves Greek patristic distinctions between the ways divine and human persons exist and act. Which aspects of human community image the divine, which do not? We need a balanced view affirming human freedom, equality and diversity along with unity and obedience, since all these characteristics image the divine. Moreover, the Father's humility, kenosis and self-offering toward the Son and Spirit and their like response provide an ethically challenging model for human leadership and community.
A41
Did Majority Religion Rule the Bench? A Study of the Warren Court's Treatment of Minority Religions
Sherryl L. Wright, Iliff School of Theology, University of Denver
When President Eisenhower nominated Earl Warren to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, he chose a noted champion of individual rights, and especially civil rights. Religious minorities had reason to hope for favorable treatment from the Warren Court. On the other hand, those who would curry government favor for the mainstream Protestantism they viewed as the nation's majority had reason to fear a renewed onslaught on establishment. The fears of the religious majority, as well as the hopes of religious minorities, would often be realized by Warren Court decisions. The pattern of majority religion losses and minority religion victories, however, was far from consistent.Persons representing minority religious viewpoints won four religious freedom cases before the Court. They also lost four. More indicative of the Court's attitude were the eight cases in which the Court limited government attempts at establishment and the three in which it upheld free exercise rights.
A41
The Federal Courts and Religious Minorities: Rethinking the Mormon Polygamy Cases
Clark Lombardi, Columbia University
According to many scholars, American courts in the nineteenth century generally did not recognize constitutional rights of free exercise, and allowed majorities to impose their moral norms through legislation. The Supreme Court's decisions in the Mormon polygamy cases in the 1880s are said to epitomize this attitude. This paper takes a fresh look at nineteenth-century cases generally and at the Mormon cases in particular. It shows that American judges up to the 1880s disagreed as to whether a believer could violate generally applicable laws to practice her religion, and argues that even the Supreme Court was initially ambivalent about religious exemptions from such laws. Only in later Mormon polygamy cases during a situation of perceived crisis did the Court categorically reject the Mormon claim to free exercise exemptions. The relationship between religious minorities and governments in the nineteenth century is thus considerably more nuanced than is generally recognized.
A41
New Religions and the Problem of "Legitimacy": How Seeking and Requiring Legal/Political Acceptance Undermines Religious Freedom in America
Barbara A. McGraw, Saint Mary's College of California
Moving away from a perceived "secularization" trend in the United States in previous decades, many since the 1980's have been promoting the acceptance of religious voices in public life. However, as there is more "accommodation" of religion in the "public square," the question arises as to the extent to which those in new religious movements may participate. Sensing the potential exclusionary threat of this question, many in new religious movements seek to establish themselves as being "legitimate." This paper will argue, however, that by seeking "legitimacy" those in such new religious movements are adopting a misinterpretation of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment that undermines the original intention of the American founders. Consequently, they unwittingly give credence to arguments that some groups are not "legitimate" enough to be accorded the right to full and equal participation.
A42
Dostoevsky's Apocalyptic Poetics and Monastic Spirituality: Elder Zosima on Restorative Justice
P. Travis Kroeker, McMaster University
Both as literary genre and religious vision, Dostoevsky's poetics may be described as apocalyptic. In "The Brothers Karamazov", Ivan's Grand Inquisitor proposes a global state as the solution to the problem of human justice a parody of the heavenly city imaged in the book of Revelation. This parodied truth is not displayed in a brilliant rejoinder to Ivan, but rather in the contrasting settings of Russian justice depicted in the novel: the modern courtroom in which Dmitri Karamazov is tried (with its rules of forensic evidence, appeals to family values, and procedural rituals in the administration of retributive justice) versus the traditional monastic cell in which elder Zosima mediates a family dispute (with its icons, cycle of prayer, and appeal to conscience rooted in the biblical narrative and particularly its vision of restorative justice). Paying close attention to these settings can tell us much about Dostoevsky's religious vision of justice.
A42
Freedom and the Cosmos in the Novels of Fyodore Dostoevsky
Wendy Wiseman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Fyodore Dostoevsky's four major novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Demons, and Brothers Karamozov, powerfully unite a modern subjectivity based on radical freedom with a vision of cosmic redemption that cannot be understood outside the context of a distinctively Russian Orthodoxy. In this paper, I trace the intimate relation between the agonistic freedom of his heroes and the mythic symbolization of "the earth" as Sophia, Mother of God, and Holy Russia. In so doing, I follow the lead of Dostoevsky's Russian interpreters who take seriously the cosmic dimension of his art, namely Vladimir Soloviev, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Nikolai Berdiaev. I will argue that this coupling of existential freedom with an archaic myth of "Mother Earth" provides the crux of Dostoevsky's artistic and religious vision, and points to a profound "kinship" with that other cosmic thinker, Friedrich Nietzche.
A42
The Quest for Fyodore Dostoevsky's Christ
Joe Barnhart, University of North Texas
Acquainted with nineteenth-century European versions of the historical Jesus, Dostoevsky had intended to rewrite a book on Christ but kept postponing it. He could not have written it because his study of the Gospels and his experiment in writing about Myshkin rendered it impossible. The Idiot is about a beautiful person (Christ being the only truly beautiful ideal). Dostoevsky's notes refer to Myshkin as "Prince Christ." Although his attempts to make his Prince Christ's temptations real, Myshkin fails to become completely embodied. On a tangent to life's circle, he lacks the necessary flesh permitting him to occupy a specific place (Bakhtin). The famous letter in which Dostoevsky says he would choose Christ over truth is not a Kierkegaardian leap of faith but must be seen as a manifestation of his Orthodox faith and his own personal vision of the meaning of Christ.
A43
Jōkei and the 'Place' of Devotion in Medieval Japanese Buddhism
James L. Ford, Wake Forest University
Jōkei (1155-1213) was a prominent Hossō monk of the early Kamakura period. Perhaps best known as an adversary to Hōnen's senju nembutsu teaching as well as a precept "revivalist," he is also noted for his eclectic life of religious devotion that featured many different Buddhist figures and practices. In this paper, I will discuss the importance of "place" in comprehending Jōkei's religious worldview and the apparent shifts in his devotional focus over time. Moreover, I will argue that the fundamental role of "place" in Jōkei's religiosity is a shared feature of both pre-modern and modern Japanese religion. Finally, in an effort to connect this research to the broader field of religious studies, I will appropriate J.Z. Smith's enduring study of "sacred space," more specifically his "locative" and "utopian" taxonomies, to contrast the understanding of "space" in the teachings and practices of Jōkei and Hōnen.
A43
Geography, Footsteps, Legends, and Symbols: The Construction of an Emotional Landscape in the Shikoku Pilgrimage
Ian Reader, Lancaster University
The 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage passes through the island's four prefectures, encompassing and encircling its geographical features, from its coast and mountainous interior, to its main population centres. Symbolically the route takes the pilgrim on a journey redolent with images of enlightenment and death, and in the footsteps of the holy figure Kōbō Daishi. Numerous legends, pilgrims' experiences and miracle tales further emphasize this image of Shikoku as a sacred realm. This paper discusses how the Shikoku pilgrimage has been "made"--through such legends, symbolic structures, and geographical features--into an emotional landscape full of sacred imagery. Based also on contemporary sources (e.g. contemporary publications, pilgrims' testimonies and developments) it shows that this conceptualisation of an emotional and sacred landscape is not just an inherited and static one, but something that is in a continuing process of development and manufacture.
A43
The Historical Development of Premodern Japanese Ghosts
Susan Blakeley Klein, University of California, Irvine
This paper will present a brief overview of how ghosts have developed in Japan from the ninth to nineteenth centuries. Ghosts are deeply problematic figures, embodying (or disembodying) on both the public and private stage the failure of political, social, and religious structures. In Japan the conceptual understanding of ghosts--their visual representation, their powers, how they can be pacified--has changed considerably over time, as new cultural anxieties and political problematics have arisen to replace old ones. With this in mind, the framing questions for the paper will be: what are the main social and symbolic functions of ghosts in each period? How does the changing representation of the demonic embody contemporaneous attitudes toward gender roles? How do attitudes toward religion of the historical period in question affect the representation of the ghost? And finally, what effect does the development of new artistic genres have on this representation?
A43
Hanako, the Toilet Ghost
Elizabeth Kenney, Kansai Gaidai University
Hanako is the most well-known and individualized of the many ghosts currently haunting Japanese schools. These ghosts have generated a genre of children's literature known as gakkō no kaidan (school ghost stories). In tracing Hanako's religious genealogy, we should remember the toilet god, associated with childbirth, who was widely worshipped until modern times. From the realm of popular religion and folklore, the Edo-period toilet monster called ganbarinyūdō (an old man) might be a precursor of Hanako. The modern Hanako might be a reflection of school anxieties, fear of death, or girls' anxieties about menstruation. In some versions Hanako has been transformed from a malevolent, vengeful spirit into a benevolent protective spirit. Children can call on her for help when beset by other ghosts or monsters. This transformation mirrors a familiar pattern in Japanese religions: that dangerous spirits, especially of the dead, need to be pacified.
A44
The More Profound the Anxiety, the More Profound the Culture
Stacey Ake, Philadelphia Center for Religion and Science
Using Kierkegaard's observation in The Concept of Anxiety that "anxiety is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility" (KW VIII 42), I will create three more parallel categories: (1) fear--freedom's actuality as the possibility of actuality, (2) resignation--freedom's actuality as the actuality of actuality, and (3)faith--freedom's actuality as the actuality of possibility. Employing these four categories, I will explore an individual's and a nation's (or a culture's) response to alterity. For, says Kierkegaard, "the more profound the anxiety, the more profound the culture" (KW VIII 42). My argument is that an individual's or a culture's view of their freedom determines the context in, by, and through which the other(s) will be perceived. I will also observe this freedom as it passes "through the imperfect forms of history" (KW VIII 42-43) via the history of race relations in the United States.
A44
Love and Difference: The Christian Ideal in Kierkegaard's Works of Love
Vanessa P. Rumble, Boston College
I offer a reading of Works of Love which focuses on certain continuities in structure between that text and earlier "aesthetic" works. Both aesthetic and veronymous writings render problematic the transition from "human" to "Christian" consciousness. For this reason, Kierkegaard's work lends itself to the same sort of deconstructive reading to which Derrida subjected Rousseau's writings in Of Grammatology, namely, a reading which draws attention to the degree to which the ideal is presentable only as textual. The dichotomy between a fallen self-enclosed consciousness (the accessible "human") and its unthinkable "other," between the positions designated by Climacus as the "Socratic" and the "Christian," is repeated throughout Kierkegaard's authorship. The reader is faced with the question of whether Kierkegaard intends to indicate the undecidability of this distinction and whether, in so doing, he approximates the conception of religiosity favored by Derrida.
A44
Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Context of Context(s)
Avron Kulak, York University
How can Kierkegaard and Derrida inform our thinking about the historical construction of self and other? In recognizing that "there can be no contextual definition of a human being," Derrida indicates that neither self nor other can break with the context of (having a) context. Derrida develops context as involving a duplicity of historical origins: the biblical call for justice and the Platonic "khora" that is "the condition for a universal politics." Yet, when Kierkegaard develops "the similarity" between biblical and Greek thought as consisting "essentially in their dissimilarity," he shows that the condition for the historical coming into existence of self and other is inseparable from the biblical dialectic of love. In my paper I shall examine the biblical dialectic of love--seeing the other as self and the self as other--as precisely the redoubling in light of which we construct self and other by deconstructing their binary oppositions.
A44
Willing to Become Oneself Which Is Not One: Kierkegaard and Irigaray
Helene Tallon Russell, Allegheny College
Contemporary feminist theorist Luce Irigaray and Kierkegaard both argue that the profoundly significant process of becoming a subject is inhibited by the tendency of society and discourse to universalize itself. This essay compares and contrasts Kierkegaard's critical analysis of the context of the individual's process toward becoming a self with Irigaray's focus on overcoming the cultural and discursive barriers to becoming a feminine subject. Kierkegaard believes that becoming a religious subject is an arduous process that is inhibited by society's and philosophy's value of universal norms. Becoming a Christian entails distinguishing oneself from the universal. Similarly, Irigaray argues that the universal structure of phallocentric discourse inhibits women in the process of becoming feminine subjects. She suggests that women identify with the characteristics of the "other" in their struggle toward becoming genuine subjects.
A45
The Adapted Soul: Evolutionary Psychology and the Study of Religion
Michael T. Bradley, Jr., Decatur, GA
Evolutionary psychology examines evolved psychological mechanisms resulting from adaptations of the mind to a Pleistocene hunter-gatherer existence. Rejecting a mind analogous to a content-free, general-purpose learning mechanism, evolutionary psychologists argue for a mind constituted by a number of specialized cognitive processes, containing important information about the world at birth. While most theorizing about evolutionary psychology has focused on biological bases for facial recognition, language acquisition, mate selection, cheater detection, reciprocal altruism, and a number of other phenomena, less attention has been paid to possible connections between evolutionary psychology and religion. This neglect, however, has begun to be remedied as scholars have started to devote attention to cognitive processes emerging in evolutionary time and facilitating religious belief. The human mind, they claim, evolved to believe in the gods. In this paper, I survey this recent work and report on the burgeoning connections between evolutionary psychology and the study of religion.
A45
A Stretch of the Imagination: Memory, Image, and the Healing Brain
David A. Hogue, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
Neuroscientific discoveries are increasingly supporting the constructed nature of human experience and therefore raising both the threat and the promise of the plasticity of such experience. Drawing upon the work of biogenetic structuralism and current research in memory and imagery, this paper explores the implications for both religious practice and psychotherapy. Both memory and perception are subject to change in order to meet the organism's needs at any given moment. Such a state of affairs not only supports a postmodern worldview, but also has powerful implications for the practices of religious communities in general, and of psychotherapy in particular. While they can undermine a sense of certainty regarding memory and perceptual "reality", they also offer explanations in support of some cultural and religious practices (including psychotherapy), while critiquing others.
A45
Male Violence, Sin, and Evolutionary Biology
Gregory Love, Princeton Theological Seminary
Reinhold Niebuhr argues that sin is "inevitable but not necessary." Niebuhr follows Augustine's classic view of sin as rooted in pride and egotism. At some level, sin is willed by the individual. In contrast, theologians like Brock and Nelson, working off Alice Miller's clinical psychology, argue that the self's movement into self-destructive or narcissistic/violent behavior is rooted in self-protective habits developed early to protect the self from emotional damage. In "The Dark Side of Man," anthropologist Michael Ghiglieri challenges both the theological and psychological views of sin's origins. His studies of primate violence suggest that violent egotism is at our core. This paper will argue that, despite appearances, both Miller's and Ghiglieri's theories have a place for what Niebuhr called "sin as freely willed" by the self. I will demonstrate my theory's fruitfulness through its coherence with historian Christopher Browning's study of male violence during WWII in "Ordinary Men."
A46
Panel: World Religions and Ecology: The Harvard Book Series and Beyond
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Bucknell University, Presiding
David L. Haberman, Indiana University, Bloomington
Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University
Kenneth L. Kraft, Lehigh University
Norman J. Girardot, Lehigh University
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Arizona State University
Rosemary R. Ruether, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
John A. Grim, Bucknell University
Bron R. Taylor, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, Responding
A milestone in the development of the field of religion and ecology was a series of ten conferences held from 1996 to 1998 at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, covering Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous traditions, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, and Daoism. These gatherings generated a series of ground-breaking books that decisively advance the field of religion and ecology as an academic discipline. This panel will continue the process of identifying ecologically pertinent resources within world religions. Prospectively, the participants will reflect on next steps, including the evolution of the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
A47
"The Lord for the Body": Sickness, Health and Divine Healing in Nineteenth-Century Protestantism
Heather D. Curtis, Harvard University
Beginning in the 1840s, accounts of miraculous healing began to circulate throughout Europe and the United States. This paper will trace the emergence of the divine healing movement among evangelical Protestants through the testimonies of "faith cures" published in popular periodicals and pamphlets. These narratives offer a window into the experiences of nineteenth-century people who considered themselves to be ill, and reveal the variety of ways in which they thought about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. Paying particular attention to the rhetoric of passivity that characterized these descriptions, this paper will assess the gendered nature and implications of these interpretations of sickness, health and healing.
A47
Buddhism, Hospice, and the American Way of Dying
Kathleen Garces-Foley, University of California, Santa Barbara
Buddhism has become a prominent voice within the "good death" movement and within hospice, in particular. Euro-American Buddhist leaders have been remarkably successful in promoting a "Buddhist approach to death" to an American public eager for concrete, spiritual guidance and pragmatic techniques for dealing with death. The influence of Buddhism has been fostered through a mutually beneficial relationship with the American hospice movement. Because hospice within the pluralistic context of American culture needed a nonsectarian language in which to approach the spiritual dimension of death, it welcomed borrowing from Buddhism. The major sources of Buddhist influence include books, hospices, and spiritual care training programs. Through these identifiably Buddhist sources, Buddhist terms and practices have unconsciously become part of the discourse and culture of the hospice movements, mixing easily with the Christian and Jewish beliefs of hospice professionals and patients.
A47
End of Life Issues Personally and Spiritually Explored (ELIPSE)- Lessons from a Latino Community
Margaret R. McLean, Santa Clara University
In response to the observation of health care professionals and social service agencies that Latino communities in the San Jose area are on the periphery of health care decision making, the ELIPSE project was begun. The objective was to explore the personal and spiritual experiences and concerns of some Latinos in the community regarding end of life care. We conducted four bilingual focus groups for guided discussion of health beliefs, practices and values in the Latino community. This paper presents the results of the ELIPSE study with particular attention to faith-based perceptions and desires concerning the ending of life.
A48
Ritual As Writing: Reflecting on Yoeme Indian Religious Action
David A. Shorter, University of California, Santa Cruz
By developing non-notational theories of writing, scholars such as James Clifford and Jacques Derrida provide a new lens through which we can recognize non-Western forms of identity demarcation. As an example of such recognitions, I draw on long-standing fieldwork with the Yoeme Indians of Northwest Mexico to demonstrate how religious rituals might be understood as writing acts, where writing delineates differences between the "self" and "others." This paper focuses on three Yoeme ceremonial performances: the "Feeding the Departing Souls" ceremony, ritual processions during Lent, and territorial patrols by the Coyote Society to highlight the ways in which many Yoeme have been historicizing their community, embodying their aboriginal status, and mapping their tribal territory. This research acknowledges that, like the Yoeme communities, other Native peoples may have long been active in religiously "writing" their auto-ethnographies.
A48
Maya Rituals: "To Connect to the Center in Which We Trust"
Jean Molesky-Poz, Graduate Theological Union
In the past fifteen years in Guatemala, Maya are publicly reclaiming ceremonial practice which has been concealed for 500 years. Here I illuminate the aesthetics of contemporary Maya ritual space, rendering the design of the altar as landscape, as map, and as center. This quatrefoil and calendric image-space, constructed of natural aromatic materials, is an understanding built up over layers of time, in distinct migrations, resettlements, transformed in historic processes, yet remembered in collective historic and mythic narratives. This ephemeral image-map of visual semiology opens up the space the West has endeavored to close down. Before the sacred fire, Maya Ajq'ijab' (daykeepers) name and remember the days of the Chol Qij (sacred calendar), and "connect to the center in which they trust." In practicing the territory of the map, Ajq'ijab' access ancestral ways of knowing.
A48
No Time Outs: Charting a Ritual History of the Cherokee Ball Game
Michael Zogry, Duke University
I offer brief summations of the findings of three researchers in order to chart a ritual history of anetsa, the Cherokee ball game: James Mooney, Raymond Fogelson, and myself. Mooney was active at the turn of the twentieth century and Fogelson in the late 50s and early 60s. My data is based on fieldwork begun in 1993 and ongoing. I conclude that anetsa is a device that supports a variety of cultural meanings (social, religious, economic, and political) and transports them through historical time. As a test case for a broadly understood group of "Native American ritual activities," this examination of the Cherokee ball game points out the need for further clarification of categories when dealing with cultural entities not born of the cultures that invented such categories.
A49
Techno-Science and the Mystical
Thomas A. Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara
While some of the best among thinkers in the early twentieth century can understand the rationality of modern science and technology to be one in which the human subject, by means of a calculative and instrumental thinking, would exclude from an objectified world any meaningful sense of the mystical, more recent thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, and Mark C. Taylor, have been able to re-interpret our late- or post-modern networks of "techno-science" in terms of a quasi-mystical logic that unsettles the modern metaphysics of the subject and its will to mastery. This paper argues that the mystical logic one might see operative in today's techno-scientific networks is tied intimately to the process of human self-creation taking place in and through those networks.
A49
The New Question Concerning Technology: From Heidegger to Baudrillard
Lissa McCullough, Hanover College
Heidegger's docetic interpretation of technology abstracts the technological quest from it biophysical ground: that is, the contingency of Dasein as it exists under the continual pressures of bodily vulnerability. Here Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, as body thinkers, crucially supplement Heidegger. There is need to view the impulse to technological development within the long evolutionary history in which any biological species negotiates biophysical accommodation from and to its Lebenswelt. Technological innovation manipulates things and ideas methodically to elicit accommodation or commoditas (from com-modus, measure) in relation to the world, achieving what Heidegger denotes as "orderability" or "standing by" (Bestand). This power to wrest accommodation has radically ambiguous implications, including dehumanizing implications. If the power to exploit vulnerability breeds inhumanity, so does the power to eliminate vulnerability.
A51
Beyond Synergism: Luther's Alternative Compatibilism
Jason A. Mahn, Emory University
The purpose of this paper is to recognize the way Luther reconfigures the nature of free will and divine grace in relation to his inherited Augustinian tradition. Luther attacks the standpoint that Erasmus assumes in arguing for the freedom of the will, a standpoint that supposes logical and ethical consistency and which arbitrates between the benefits and drawbacks of different depictions of freedom. Understanding the debate as principally between Erasmus' mediating and Luther's confessional standpoints offers a unique understanding of Lutheran anthropology, but seems to diminish the role of Lutheran ethics. I argue that acknowledging that the debate is about standpoints actually allows one to recognize a new kind of compatibilism between freedom and grace, vital for reconstructing Lutheran ethics. It is possible to couple the grace that prohibits salvific freedom with a freedom determined in
relation to responsibility.
A51
What's Wrong With Pelagianism? Augustine and Jerome on the Dangers of Pelagius and His Followers
Michael R. Rackett, Duke University
What's wrong with Pelagianism? Simply put, the answer depends upon whom you ask. Fifth-century critics such as Jerome and Augustine gave rather different responses to the question of what constituted the most dangerous aspect of the teaching of Pelagius and his followers. Juxtaposing these different critiques, and comparing them with Pelagian primary sources, illumines the extent to which Pelagianism as an enduring theological heresy is largely an Augustinian construct. In light of Augustine's role in setting the boundaries of the debate, perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of the "Augustinian" controversies (and semi- or demi-Augustinian controversies) through history than of the "Pelagian" controversies.
A51
The Role of God's "Inscrutable Judgments" in Augustine's Doctrine of Predestination
Paul Rigby, University of Ottawa
A review of the last hundred years of scholarship reveals that most scholars believe that Augustine's teaching on predestination entails double predestination. In response some scholars fall back on Augustine's own appeal to mystery. Others regard Augustine's appeal to mystery negatively. They believe that Augustine compromised his habitual intellectual rigor and surreptitiously manipulated the meaning of the concept of justice. I will show that Augustine appeals to God's inscrutable judgments not to salvage God's justice but to reduce human wisdom to silence before the Deus Absconditus. God's gracious mercy can no longer be understood as an arbitrary exception set within the economy of justice but as an inscrutable wisdom that teaches us to accept what we do not understand. Learned ignorance is the theme revealing Jesus the wisdom of God: the predestined servant who "must" suffer and who reveals in his absolute freedom for goodness the infinite goodness of God.
A51
Economies of Exchange: Pelagianism and Reciprocity in Calvin's Theology
Jared Witt, Yale University
This paper brings Derrida's recent theorizing about "gifts" into conversation with the theology of John Calvin in order to look at Calvin's "pelagian" rhetoric in a new way. A recent book by historian Natalie Davis reveals a set of concerns and questions about gifts shared by these two conceptual worlds (The Gift in Sixteenth Century France, published 2000). I will argue that recent reflection on gifts raises a number of questions that were at the heart of Calvin's theology of grace. For Calvin, the economy of God's relating to humanity called "grace" is distorted when described in terms of reciprocal obligations. Calvin's worries about Catholic conceptions of merit and sacrifice reveal that for Calvin the circuit of gift giving runs from God the Giver through the faithful and out into the world in an ethic of gratitude and praise.
A52
Panel: Employment Information Services Advisory Committee - "If I Knew Then What I Know Now": Lessons from the First Year on the Job
Richard A. Rosengarten, University of Chicago, Presiding
Former users of the EIS Center reflect on and offer advice about the first year on the job during this special topics forum. Panelists will speak to their wisdom and missteps as they contended with developing new courses, teaching new students, completing a dissertation, balancing career and family life, and learning the local cultures of their new department, institution, and locality. Panelists include Faith Kirkham Hawkins, Gustavus Adolphus College; Michael J. Brown, Emory University; and Thomas Pearson, Muhlenberg College.
A53
Panel: Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities - Identity, Scholarship, and Teaching: Studying Religion Cross-Culturally and Ethnically
Karen Baker-Fletcher, Claremont School of Theology, Presiding
José I. Cabezón, Iliff School of Theology
Laura E. Donaldson, Cornell University
Chris Jocks, Dartmouth College
Lawrence Mamiya, Vassar College
Amina Wadud, Virginia Commonwealth University
Diane L. Eck, Responding
As students of religion, we often have to teach courses broadly, cutting across religious traditions and cultures that are not our own. The purpose of this panel is to examine the issues, problems, and strategies involved in studying and teaching religion across racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries. For example, what are the problems and issues of a non-black person studying and teaching African American religion or a non-Muslim doing the same for Islam? Similarly, what issues does a Muslim professor encounter on a largely Christian campus? In recent years, we have also heard about some Native American groups refusing access to non-Native scholars. What are the moral responsibilities of scholars of religion? What strategies have been employed in teaching and scholarship to deal sensitively with racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries?
A54
Consummation or Consumption?: Bakhtin and the Ethics of Intertextuality
Crystal Downing, Messiah College
Though Mikhail Bakhtin inspired Julia Kristeva's word "Intertextuality," intertextual studies often operate in defiance of Bakhtin's moral philosophy, which valorized "unfinalizability" over finalized readings. After outlining the relationship between Bakhtin's ethical and aesthetic philosophies, I will use the love affair between two of Bakhtin's contemporaries, Christian novelist / playwright / essayist Dorothy L. Sayers and Jewish poet / novelist / journalist John Cournos, to exemplify the problematics of intertextuality, suggesting that, to preserve a Bakhtinian ethic, appropriations / quotations of the textual "other" must create an "architectonics of answerability" which consummates rather than consumes the other.
A54
Confession and Dialogical Selfhood in Bakhtin
Paul J. Contino, Valparaiso University
In an intellectual milieu in which assertions about the "constructedness of the self" are commonplace, Mikhail Bakhtin's claims about the "deepest I," discovered in confessional dialogue with another, may sound quaint. But Bakhtin's notion of the dialogical self poses a vital alternative both to the instability and determinism implicit in understandings of the self as "constructed," and to Enlightenment models of sovereign subjectivity. Moreover, Bakhtin's notion of self can be understood as having a religious grounding. For Bakhtin, integral selfhood is forged especially through confessional dialogue, in which one is called by a Divine summons to reject the vaporous self produced by "alibis for Being," to apply one's "signature" to one's deeds, and to respond to others with loving attentiveness (Toward a Philosophy of the Act ). Bakhtin's thought illuminates confessional encounters in numerous literary works, and this paper will focus on the examples of Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov.
A54
M.M. Bakhtin's Perspectival Realism
Susan M. Felch, Calvin College
Bakhtin's sense that the world is constituted by God's call and human response models a notion of utterance that replaces Saussure's inadequate abstract account of language as the relationship of signifier and signified. Because utterance is both contextualized and unique, it gives rise to a perspectivism that contrasts with modernist universalism. But such perspectivism is counterpoised by Bakhtin's statement that the world is not only "something-to-be-achieved" but "something given," a contrast with postmodern thought. Christ, in the incarnation, embodies both call and response and elicits "the unity of the actual and answerably act-performing consciousness" that Bakhtin terms "faithfulness." Bakhtin's own stance may be described as perspectival realism, giving full weight to the implications embedded in each of those terms. Such perspectival realism, neither rigidly logocentric nor logophobic, gestures toward a refreshed ethical/aesthetic language that, among other virtues, provides a way to analyze literature as a complex human response.
A54
Intercultural, Intercreatural: Bakhtin and the Uniqueness of 'Literary Seeing'
Graham Pechey, University of Hertforshire
The argument of this paper is (1) that the Bakhtin who forsakes the elaboration of a first philosophy for author-or genre-based literary studies does so for reasons which are not wholly Aesopian; (2) that Bakhtin's reading of the European literary canon as an undogmatic Christian so re-articulates Scripture upon literature as to bring out the inherently transcultural dimension of both; (3) that literature with its richly incarnated interpenetration of the intimate and the ultimate as an axiological and epistemological weight which is quite specific and which is out of the reach of all other modes of knowledge whatever. Besides averting the loss of Bakhtin to an 'aesthetic activity' thinned to abstraction in the discourse of philosophy, the advantage of this approach is that it brings on to common ground within the anglophone academic community both the traditionalist defenders of the canon and those critics of its alleged Eurocentricity who champion the 'postcolonial'.
A55
Flowers from the Sky: Auspicious Portents in Two Jishū Hagiographies
J. Todd Brown, University of Arizona
This paper examines the rhetorical functions of accounts of auspicious portents in the illustrated hagiographic works produced by two early, competing factions of the Jishū: the biography of the Jishū's founder, Ippen, known as the Ippen hijiri e; and the biography of Ippen and his self-appointed successor, Shinkyō, known as the Yugyō shōnin engi e. Focusing particularly on two motifs - manifestations of purple clouds and of flowers raining down from above - I compare the works' accounts of these phenomena with one another and with other texts in which similar motifs appear, and seek to determine the meanings that a medieval Japanese audience would have ascribed to these conventional auspicious signs in several specific contexts. Additionally, I identify ways in which differences between the two works' respective approaches to these occurrences reflect differences in the circumstances under which the Hijiri e and the Engi e were written.
A55
The Jishū Appropriation of Icons: The Case of the Burned-Cheek Amida
James H. Foard, Arizona State University
The temples of the Jishū are replete with icons appropriated from other temples. Through a careful examination of one particular case of this phenomenon, the "Burned-Cheek Amida" of the Kosokuji in Kamakura, this paper will show the significance of this appropriation for the growth of the Jishū in the Kamakura period. In particular, it will explore two issues: the transformation of the Jishū into an iconic group, and the social significance of the particular icons that were appropriated. As the Jishū became established, its practice halls (dōjō) also became temples (tera), which by definition have icons. The use of icons, therefore, is one measure of the domestication of wayfaring (yugyō). Furthermore, the case of the Kosokuji suggests that the Jishū appropriated particular icons which served that domestication as devices for claiming jurisdiction both over rebirth in Amida's Pure Land and over wayfaring itself.
A55
The Yugyō Shōnin, Izumi Shikibu, and the Rededication of the Seiganji in 1580
S. A. Thornton, Arizona State University
In 1580, the Kyoto Seiganji, which had been burned down in 1574 as a result of warfare, was rebuilt. No record of this has survived except in the travel diary of the thirty-second patriarch of the Jishū. He not only made a substantial donation, but figured prominently in the ceremony affixing the temple plaque. The inscription was said to have been changed to "Namauamidabutsu" as a result of the encounter between the so-called founder of the Jishū, Ippen (1259-1289), and the ghost of the famed Heian poetess Izumi Shikibu, made famous in the nō play Seiganji. The travel diary reveals that the Jishū was uncomfortable with this "tradition." This paper will discuss the legitimation of the legend by the Jishū as a result of the close relationship between these two important centers of nenbutsu practice, both of which belonged to the same Seizan school lineage of Pure Land Buddhism.
A55
Concerns Both Sacred and Mundane: The Jishū Nuns of Mantokuji
Diana E. Wright, Western Washington University
While much is known about the daily lives of Buddhist monks in premodern Japan, relatively little is known about those of nuns, particularly those of the Jishū sect. The degree to which these women (and by extension, female clerics in general) interacted with the secular world around them has been underestimated and under-appreciated. My paper addresses this lacuna by analyzing records concerning life within one particular Jishū convent: Mantokuji. Mantokuji, which operated as both an ancestral temple of the Tokugawa and as one of Edo Japan's "divorce temples" (enkiridera), was neither 'purely' religious nor 'purely' secular. Similarly, Mantokuji's nuns played a vital multi-dimensional role in the society around them. Intimately connected to the world outside their confines, Mantokuji's nuns of necessity dealt with concerns both sacred and mundane.
A56
Christian Martyrs and the Heavenly Temple: The Reinterpretation of Civic Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Robin Darling Young, Catholic University of America
Following certain interpretation of the death of Jesus, earliest Christianity connected the public, sacrificial deaths of its martyrs with ascent to heaven and with the celestial liturgy continually taking place in the heavenly temple. Like all ancient religions, it thereby linked the human city with the realm of the divine. At the same time, its teachers has reinterpreted the animal sacrifices of the Jerusalem Temple and substituted the Eucharist in their stead. Drawing on scriptural themes and images, martyrs' ritualized deaths and the growing understand of the Eucharistic ritual mutually reinforced each other, especially when linked by explicit, philosophical theories developed by the second- and third-century teachers Clement of Alexandria and Origen. This paper examines the way in which their thought provided an explanation for the public and political character of Christian sacrifice, allowing it eventually to replace the public sacrifices of antiquity with newly reinterpreted Christian rites.
A56
Elements of Sacrifice: A Polytheistic Approach
Kathryn Teague McClymond, Georgia State University
This paper presents a polythetic characterization of sacrifice, challenging characterizations that focus on "killing" as the definitive element of sacrifice. I will begin by examining animal sacrifices in brahmanical Hinduism and biblical and rabbinic Judaism. Then I will demonstrate that these sacrifices involve multiple procedures, not just the killing of the animal. We will see that no single procedure defines sacrifice; rather, various combinations of these procedures-sacrificial clusters-generate the ritual phenomenon that scholars identify as sacrifice. Such an understanding challenges theories of sacrifice that highlight the killing of the animal as a dramatic, climactic, and definitive activity. In conclusion I will argue that the comparative study of sacrifice challenges dominant understands of sacrifice that developed in Religious Studies when it was dominated by the study of Christianity.
A56
Liturgics of Confucian Sacrifice
Thomas Wilson, Hamilton College
This paper examines sacrifice to the spirit of Confucius in imperial China by (1) situating the formation of the liturgy of sacrifice in the context of disputes concerning placement of Confucius in the ancient pantheon of gods and spirits described in the ritual canons; (2) examining these canonical sources to elucidate the meaning of various parts of the liturgy; and (3) comparing Confucian sacrifice with Vedic and Hebrew rites to interrogate the Chinese sources and presuppositions that historians bring to the study of sacrifice. The papers shows that Confucian sacrifice defined the literati's relationship with gods and spirits characterized by the primacy of exchange rather than expiation or inner spiritual transformation. The paper seeks to complicate current theories of sacrifice through a study of Confucian ritual, which does not fit neatly into paradigms based on the analysis of Vedic and Hebrew sacrifice.
A56
Metaphors of Sacrifice: Language and Ideology in the Interpretation of Buddhist 'Sacrifice'
Charles D. Orzech, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Buddhism is often portrayed as a non-violent and anti-sacrificial religions, but despite this characterization, it is easy to find "sacrifice" throughout the tradition, from the narratives of the Jatakas to the ubiquitous practice of home ("immolation") in tantric Buddhism; from the practice of "self-immolation" to elaborate offerings for wandering "ghosts." In this paper I use metaphor theory to track the ideological contours of sacrificial discourse in two Buddhist cases that challenge the utility of the category sacrifice. Attending to the intersection of colonial translation and interpretation, and indigenous discourse, I discuss 1. The emergence of the Buddhist-Shui-lu ("land and water") rite in early modern China and its later interpretation by colonial ethnographers as "Plenary Masses" for the dead, and 2. Buddhist self-immolation in early medieval China and in twentieth century Vietnam and its interpretation in the press and in scholarship.
A57
The Spiritual Optics of the Mirror in Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum: Constructing a Subjectivity of Desire
Jay Hammond, Quincy University
The Itinerarium presents a theological interpretation of Francis's vision of the Seraph and reception of the stigmata. Central to this interpretatio