Published: Aug. 7, 2015

The Department of Religious Studies made a strong showing at the international meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco (November 19-22).  Five members of the faculty and two graduate students participated in the meetings in various capacities.

Chip Horner presented a paper entitled "Scientific Embodiment: Affective Dimensions of Knowledge in Peircean Abduction, Neurocognitive Science, and Trika Saivism of Kashmir."

Kaira Schachter presented a paper entitled "Towards a More Democratic
Pedagogy: A Pragmatic Approach to Religious Studies in American Public Education."

Holly Gayley presentes a paper entitled "Eating Monkey Brains: Exoticizing the Han Banquet in a Tibetan Buddhist Argument for Vegetarianism."  She was also a panelist in a session called "Stand-alone MA Programs in Religion."

Brian Catlos presented a paper entitled "Religious Orthodoxy, Ethnoreligious Plurality, and Legal Compromise in the Medieval Mediterranean."

Loriliai Biernacki presented a paper entitled "Rethinking the Body: The Magical Hybrid Tantric Body."  She also presided over a session entitled "Tantra out of the Box: Young Scholars Looking at Tantra across Disciplines and from Outside Perspectives."

Greg Johnson served as respondent to a session entitled "Land, Identity, and Transnational Wests."

Ruth Mas presided over a session entitled "The Passing of Tradition: A Philosophical Requiem for Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohammed Arkoun, and Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri."

Deborah Whitehead presided over a session entitled "Cornel West and Prophetic Pragmatism."