Many of our graduate students also presented at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting in Boston. A couple of their talks are highlighted here:
Sabina Ali presented parts of her dissertation research at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting in Boston. Her presentation, “Weaponizing Indigeneity: Zionist Public Discourse on Possessing Palestine,” critiqued Zionist claims to indigeneity as functioning within settler-colonial logics that treat land as property to be possessed and controlled. She argued that these claims are incommensurable with critical Indigenous articulations of indigeneity, which are grounded in deep time, reciprocal, kin-based relationships with land and all beings. These Indigenous articulations are fundamentally in conflict with nation-state assertions of sovereignty and with possessive and extractive orientations toward land. In her analysis, the ontological incompatibilities are especially evident in the ongoing violence, including genocide and ecocide, perpetrated by the Israeli state.
Amber Lowe presented a paper at the Academy of Religion in the Theology of Martin Luther King Unit. Titled “Preaching Death, Preaching Life: A Phenomenology of the Sermon in Anti-Black America,” the paper examines the sermon as a racial and phenomenological event. This paper explores how sermons preached by white clergy before congregational participation in lynchings functioned as performative sites where theology, embodiment, and temporality were co-constituted. By juxtaposing these sermons with Martin Luther King Jr.’s homiletic practice, this paper highlights the sermon’s capacity to form, de-form, and reconstitute communal subjectivity. It considers how preaching operates not only as theological discourse but also as a ritual that materializes racialized temporality and collective affect.
Graduate Students Present at AAR
Saturday, November 22, 2025
The College of Arts