Presentation in Chicago

A bit of shameless self-promotion:

Exploratory Sessions (A18-232)
Per Smith, Boston University, Presiding

Theme: Irreligion, Secularism and Social Change
Sunday, Nov. 19 – 1 – 2:30 PM, McCormick Place West, room 178A, Chicago

"Scholars of religion from a variety of disciplines are increasingly focusing their attention on the relationship between the religious and the secular. So what would a sustained discussion of 'the secular' look like within the American Academy of Religion; and moreover, how would such a discussion be relevant to religious studies? This exploratory session seeks to provide modest answers to those questions by example. On the heels of the year of the protestor, the session explores how 'the secular' is implicated in and affected by social transformations. How did social change make the secular possible? How have the demands of 20th century social movements shaped emergent forms of secularism? How do contemporary social movements provide fertile soil for secular theologies of resistance? And how are contemporary irreligious identities evolving within a social context that considers them deviant?

Daniel Silliman, University of Heidelberg
The Possibility of Secularity and the Material History of Fiction 
Petra Klug, University of Leipzig
The Dynamics of Standardisation and Deviance using the Way U.S. Society deals with Atheists as an Example 
Jordan Miller, Salve Regina University
Occupying Absence: Political Resistance and Secular Theology 

Responding: Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Social Science Research Council