Preliminary Schedule
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Biennial Meeting – 2013
Please note that this schedule is correct in terms of the times and days of sessions, but
more details will be added before it is printed (e.g. do not worry if your affiliation is not
currently listed). We have allotted 20 minutes per paper on panels. Many panels also
include extra time for discussion. For ease of reference, the schedule lists only the panel
titles. If you have sent in an abstract for a single paper, please see the list of panels that
appears after the schedule to find out in which panel your paper is included. If you are
part of a submitted panel, you can just look for your panel name below.
THURSDAY APRIL 11
5:00 Registration-San Gabriel Foyer
5:00-7:30 pm Book Display
6:00-8:00 pm San Gabriel foyer, Pasadena Hilton
Evening Reception
FRIDAY APRIL 12
7:30 Registration
8:00-5:00 Book Display
8:00am – 9:15am
1. Esoteric Encounters, Occult Mixtures and Ritual Inventions in African
Diasporic Spiritual Tradition
2. Syncretism as Theory: Deleuzian Assemblages, Affects, Intensities and
Virtualities in the Anthropology of Religion (Part 1)
9:15am – 10:45am
1. The Politics of Religious Mixture in the Black Atlantic
2. Syncretism as Theory (Part 2)
9:15am – 12:00pm
1. Shamanism, Christianity, and the State
10:00 – 12:30
1. Tradition and Faith, Discourse and Change
10:30 – 12:30
1. Indigenous Christianity and Evangelical Christians
10:45 – 12:30
1. Roundtable on Anthropologists in Religious Studies Departments
12:30pm – 2:30pm LUNCH
2:30pm – 4:30pm
1. Roundtable on Material Objects and Christian Identities
3:00pm - 4:30pm
1. Conversion and Return Conversion
2. Religion, Education, and Health
5:00pm
Presidential Lecture – Janet Hoskins
SATURDAY APRIL 13
8:00 am Registration
9:00-5:00 Book Display
8:30am – 10:30am
1. Towards an Anthropology of Catholicism: Carnality, Ambiguity, and ‘the
Homely’ (Part 1)
2. Political Theologies: Intersections with Secularism, Nationalism, and Other
Religions (Part 1)
3. Religious Creativity, Eclecticism, and the Arts
4. Syncretism, Religion, and Community Development
10:30am – 12:30pm
1. Leadership Roles and Political Organization
10:45am – 12:30pm
1. Towards an Anthropology of Catholicism (Part 2)
2. Political Theologies (Part 2)
3. Syncretic Muharram: Shi’i Muslim Minorities and the Performance of
Ethnicity and Nationalism
12:30am – 2:30pm LUNCH
2:30pm – 5:00pm
Presidential Panel and Discussion
(Joel Robbins, Charles Stewart, Robert Weller)
6:00pm
Rappaport Lecture – J. Lorand Matory
SUNDAY APRIL 14
8:30am – 10:30am
1. Contemplative Ethnography
8:30am – 11:00am
1. Ethnicity, Religion and Cultural Differences
10:15am – 12:00am
1. Weber’s Theory of Value and the Study of Religious Moralities as they
Engage with a Society of Alternatives
10:30am – 12:00am
1. Economy, Development, and Recovery
Panels and Participants for Panels Made Up of Volunteered Papers
Groupings of paper proposals (Authors, Affiliations, & Titles)
1)
Shamanism, Christianity, and the State
Gonzalez, Toni “The Religious Connotations of Chultuns”
Kile, Lora (Arizona State) “The Necessity of Bricolage: The Worldview of the
Sixteenth Century Friars”
Bishop, Joyce (California State University, Sacramento) “Asking for the Virgin's
Hand: An Indigenous Interpretation of Christmas”
Abse , Edward
(Virgina Commonwealth) “Seeing double in Mazatec shamanic
visions: Schismogenetic transformations of syncretism in a
Catholicized Mesoamerican religion”
García Molina, Andrés (California – Berkeley) “The Yajé Harmonica: A study in
syncretism, synergy, and agency”
Hill, Jonathan (Southern Illinois - Carbondale) “Conversion as Rupture,
Conversion as Preservation: Exploring the Paucity of Syncretistic
Religions in Indigenous Amazonia”
Mustafina, Raushan (N. Gumilyev Eurasian National – Kazakhstan) “Religious
traditions of the Kazakhs”
2)
Ethnicity, Religion, and Cultural Difference
Crosson, J. Brent (California- Santa Cruz) “Religious Synergies Without
Syncretism: Healing, Harm and Solidarity through Difference in
Trinidad”
Tsuji, Teruyuki (St. Louis) “Sharing Mothers: Religious Conflict and
Hyphenation”
Evrard, Amy Young (Gettysburg)
“Forming a Christian Identity in Oman”
Theodoropoulos, Anastasia (New Mexico) “Wholly Brazilian and Wholly
Orthodox: Paradoxes of Simultaneity in Brazilian Orthodox
Christianity
Premawardhana, Devaka (Harvard) “Symbiosis: Asian Theologian Alyosius
Pieris’ Critique of Syncretism and its Relevance for Anthropology”
Swazey, Kelli (Hawaii) “‘Returning’ culture to the church: Christian responses to
the public redefinition of the relationship of religion and culture in
representations of regional identity in North Sulawesi, Indonesia”
3)
Conversion and Return Conversion
Ozgul, Ceren (CUNY Graduate Center) “Is Sincerity Secular?: The Politics of
Armenian Return Conversions in Turkey
Ozyurek, Esra (California – San Diego) “Being German, Becoming Muslim:
Religious Conversion, Salafism, and Belonging in Germany”
Stephan, Christopher (UCLA) “Krishna works in mysterious ways”: Is it
Syncretism? The case of Hare Christna
4)
Indigenous Christianity and Evangelical Christians
Marshall, Kimberly (Oklahoma) “ Soaking Songs and Musical Resonance:
Navigating Continuity and Discontinuity with Diné (Navajo)
Pentecostals”
Howell, Brian (Wheaton) “Anthropology and the Making of Billy Graham”
Santos, Jorge (MetroState) “Historical Trauma and the Rejection of Syncretism”
Reynolds, Lydia (Biola) “The Curse of the Dragon: Theological Shifts in the
Cosmology of a Modernizing Sikkimese Hill Tribe and the
Ethnographic Study of Indigenous Christianity”
Hammons, Christian (Southern California) “Animism and the Art of Not Being
Governed in Sumatra”
5)
Economy, Development, and Recovery
Scott, Rachelle (Tennessee) “The Beckoning Spirit of Thailand: Locating Nang
Kwak in Thai Religious Spaces”
Dunstan, Adam (Buffalo) “Toxic desecration: indigenous knowledge and
environmentalism in the battle for a sacred mountain”
Kornfeld, Moshe (Michigan) “Interfaith Synergies and Boundary Maintenance in
Post-Katrina New Orleans”
Junge, Benjamin (SUNY - New Paltz) “The Energy of Others’: Narratives of
Envy and Purification among Former Leaders from the Porto
Alegre Participatory Budget”
6)
Religious Creativity, Eclecticism, and the Arts
Zehner, Edwin “Hybridity” in Thai Society and Religion: Limits of a Concept
Moro, Pamela (Willamette) “Thai Music, Dance, and Religion in Diaspora:
Synergetic Performance and the Production of Heritage at
Transnational Buddhist Temples”
Ginossar, Sagi (Hebrew – Jerusalem) “Change is the law of nature”: Innovations
in a Western Himalayan cosmology
Vann, Jodi Ann (Arizona State) “Spiritual Souvenirs: Contemporary Pagan
Pilgrimage and the Embodied Biography of Postmodern Religion”
Weibel, Deana “Syncretism in the Service of Colonialism: The Universalizing
Approach of Religious Creativism”
7)
Leadership Roles and Political Organization
Shalev, Guy (North Carolina - Chapel Hill) “Competing Charismas: Negotiating
Leadership and Practice in a Sufi Order”
Roy, Arpan (California State – Los Angeles) “No God But . . . : Secularizing the
Palestine Solidarity Movement
Spencer, Belinda (Brigham Young) “An Issue of Legitimacy: Hmong Religious
and Ethnonational Borders in Northern Thailand”
Hickman, Jacob (Brigham Yount) “The Art of Being Governed: Managing the
Soul of General Vang Pao through the Rituals of Aspirational
Statecraft”
Evans, Nicholas (Cambridge) “Islamic disputation and the creation of a pious
sociality”
8)
Tradition and Faith, Discourse and Change
Mauricio Junior, Cleonardo (U. Federal Pernambuco – Brazil) “The Commensals
of the Word: Emotions and Body in the constitution of charismatic
Brazilian believers”
Landes, David
“The Impossibility of Tradition”
Lee, Ken (California State – Northridge)
"Immediate Birth in the Pure Land:
A Study of Shinjin in Shinran's Buddhism"
Henn, Alexander (Arizona State) “Syncretism Reconsidered: Space, Memory and
Health in Hindu--‐Catholic Popular Religion in Goa (India)”
Nagle, Jim
“Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi “
Gonsalves, Roselle (Calgary) “The Social Diaspora: Rebuilding Communal
Identity for Goan Catholics in the Canadian Diaspora”
9)
Religion, Education and Health
Sood, Anubha (Washington – St Louis) “Sacred pain as a modality of healing
from psychological ailments: Case of the Balaji temple in
Rajasthan, India”
Cappy, Christina (Wisconsin-Madison) “At the Intersection of Religion,
Philosophy, and Ethics: The Role of Ubuntu in South African
Public Policy”
Brashinsky, Joshua “Cultivating Discontinuity: Pentecostal Pedagogies of
Yielding and Control”