Thur and Fri Sessions on American Religion at the Jan 2011 AHA

Randall Stephens

I think it would be safe to say that the American Historical Association annual meeting has never featured as many panels on religious history (with loads devoted to American religious history) as the 2011 conference does. I paste many of these below, though I've probably missed some. I was unable to get the "chair" and "comment" notes on here. But, you can get a general picture of the range of panels. I've only gone through Thursday and Friday. Will post the rest later.

THURSDAY, JAN 6, 3:00-5:00pm


The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s: Activist Protestants or Intolerant Americans? Hynes Convention Center, Room 103

Joint session with the Immigration and Ethnic History Society Evelyn Sterne, University of Rhode Island
“We Put the Bible in the Schools”: The Ku Klux Klan on Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range David J. LaVigne, College of St. Benedict and St.
John’s University
The Ku Klux Klan Confronts New England Catholics in the 1920s Mark P. Richard, Plattsburgh (State University of New York)
The Hooded Schoolhouse: School Reform, State- Building, and Cultural Intolerance in the 1920s Thomas R. Pegram, Loyola University Maryland
Leonard Moore, McGill University

The Righteous Fast: Nation of Islam, Mormon, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives Marriott Boston Copley Place, Fairfield Room

Amy Bentley, New York University
The Role of Public Humiliation and Fasting in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Disaster Ken Albala, University of the Pacific
The Interplay of Scientific and Religious Authorities in Mormon and Nation of Islam Fasting Practices Kate Holbrook, Boston University
The Feast at the End of the Fast: Yom Kippur’s Break Fast Rituals and American Judaism Nora Rubel, University of Rochester
R. Marie Griffith, Harvard Divinity School

The State of Abolition Studies: From the Sacred to the Secular? Hynes Convention Center, Room 306

Chair:David B. Davis, Yale University Panel: Christopher L. Brown, Columbia University
Stephen Kantrowitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison James Sidbury, University of Texas Manisha Sinha, University of Massachusetts at Amherst John W. Stauffer, Harvard University

Keywords in American Religious History: Diaspora, Sexuality, Liberalism, Pentecostalism, Martyr
Hynes Convention Center, Room 303

David Harrington Watt, Temple University
Diaspora
Elizabeth McAlister, Wesleyan University
Sexuality
Kathryn Lofton, Yale University
Liberalism
Matthew S. Hedstrom, University of Virginia
Pentecostalism
Randall J. Stephens, Eastern Nazarene College

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Religion, War, and Nation: Philadelphian Quakers in the Revolutionary Atlantic Marriott Boston Copley Place, MIT Room

Jenna Gibbs, Florida International University
Cowards, Cheats, Conspirators: The Anti-Quaker Campaign in Philadelphia, 1775–1800 Sarah Crabtree, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Reading, Writing, Working, and Sailing: Finding the Haitian Revolution in a Quaker Household James Alec Dun, Princeton University
Richard Godbeer, University of Miami

American Society of Church History Session 4 Mormon History Association Session 1
Women’s Ritual and Religious Authority in Early Mormonism
The Westin Copley Place, St. George Room D

Philip Barlow, Utah State University
Nineteenth-Century LDS Marital Rites and the Not- So-Patrilineal Family Kathleen Flake, Vanderbilt University
Eliza R. Snow and the Expression of Female Authority in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism Jill M. Derr, Brigham Young University
Women’s Birth and Death Rituals in the Lived Religion of Mormonism, 1870s–1920s Susanna Morrill, Lewis and Clark College
James Hudnut-Beumler, Vanderbilt University

FRIDAY, JAN 7, 9:30-11:30am

Sanctifying Social Struggles across the Mid-Twentieth-Century South
Hynes Convention Center, Room 311

Lisa McGirr, Harvard University
The Christian Left, Agricultural Labor Unions, and the Sacralization of Rural Life in the 1930s Alison Collis Greene, Yale University
Prophetic Front: New Era School of Social Action and Prophetic Religion and the Fight Against Jim Crow in the 1930s Jarod Roll, University of Sussex
Restructuring, Religion, and Antiunionism in the Post- World War II Upland South Ken Fones-Wolf, West Virginia University Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, West Virginia University
James R. Green, University of Massachusetts at Boston

Same-Sex Marriage in Historical and Transnational Perspective
Hynes Convention Center, Room 111
Joint session with the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History

Kenneth Sherrill, Hunter College, City University of New York
“Out of the closets and into the chapels!”: Same-Sex Weddings and the Battle for Marriage Equality Karen M. Dunak, Muskingum University
“Don’t Forget that Matrimony is a Holy Act, Even When It Is a Civil Ceremony”: Changes in Sexual Norms and the Conceptualization of Gay Families in Scandinavia Since the 1990s
Jens Rydstrom, Centre for Gender Studies, Lund University
Marriage and American Citizenship: Polygamy and Same-Sex Marriage Christine Talbot, University of Northern Colorado
Felicia A. Kornbluh, University of Vermont

Sacred Politics: Rethinking the Rise of the Religious Right
Marriott Boston Copley Place, Tremont Room
Joint session with the American Society of Church History R. Marie Griffith, Harvard Divinity School

Carl McIntire and the Anticommunist Origins of the Religious Right Markku Ruotsila, University of Helsinki
God’s New Grand Narrative: The Intellectual Mobilization of the Religious Right, 1970–2000 Molly Worthen, Yale University
When the Religious Right Almost Turned Left: Born- Again Activism before the Moral Majority Darryl G. Hart, Temple University
Leo P. Ribuffo, George Washington University

American Society of Church History Session 8
Religion and the Reforming Spirit in America
The Westin Copley Place, St. George Room C

Dan McKanan, Harvard University
Subcultural Expertise and the Limits of Reform in America
Dana Logan, Indiana University
Profits of Religion: Anticlericalism and the Labor Movement
Kip Richardson, Harvard University
Reforming Sex: C. Everett Koop and the Moral Politics of Public Health Anthony Petro, New York University
Dan McKanan

FRIDAY, JAN 7, 2:30-4:30pm

Sacred Belief, Secular Action: The Politics of African American Religions in the Early Anglo-Atlantic World Hynes Convention Center, Room 101

Gregory T. Knouff, Keene State College
“We Expect Great Things”: Puritanism, Black Petitioning, and the Origins of American Abolitionism Christopher Cameron, The University of North
Carolina Charlotte
“Has God appointed us as their slaves?” Black Reformers and Sacred Politics, 1787–1807 Dianne W. Cappiello, Cornell University
“The Bad Thing”: Obeah and the Politics of Afro-Caribbean Religion among Slaves in Berbice (British Guiana) Randy M. Browne, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
Jason R. Young, University at Buffalo (State University of New York)

Revisiting the Teaching of Religious History Hynes Convention Center, Room 103

Janet Bordelon, New York University
Teaching Sacred Literature in Secular Spaces
Janet Bordelon
Teaching American Religion at a State University in the Bible Belt, Part 1 Keith A. Pacholl, University of West Georgia
Teaching American Religion at a State University in the Bible Belt, Part 2 Daniel K. Williams, University of West Georgia
Wanting to Be Standardized: State Standards, Standardized Tests, and the Teaching of Buddhism Thomas W. Barker, University of Kansas

Publishing the Sacred: The Religious Uses of Popular Print in Early America Hynes Convention Center, Room 311

Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut
The Neo-Platonist of New Jersey: Daniel Leeds, Mystic, Schismatic Sara S. Gronim, Long Island University,
C.W. Post Campus
“Heavens” and “Firmament”: Popular Science and “Declaring the Glory of the Lord” in Christian Periodicals in the Early American Republic Lily Santoro, University of Delaware
Debunking Denominationalism in Early American Religious History T. J. Tomlin, University of Northern Colorado
Daniel A. Cohen, Case Western Reserve University

American Society of Church History Session 14
Rethinking American Slavery and the History of Christianity
The Westin Copley Place, St. George Room D

John W. Stauffer, Harvard University
From Slave Trader to Abolitionist: “Quaker Tom” Robinson of Newport, Rhode Island Elizabeth Cazden, independent scholar
Francis Wayland, Religion, and Antislavery in America, 1830–65 Matthew Hill, Gordon College
“These Silken Ties”: Ecclesiastical Compromise and the Problem of Slavery in the Presbyterian Schism of 1837–38 Adam Borneman, independent scholar
The 1857–58 Businessmen’s Revival and Slavery, the Elephant in the Room Mark Draper, Trinity International University
John W. Stauffer

American Society of Church History Session 16
Narratives of Contemporary Christian Expansion
The Westin Copley Place, Essex Ballroom Northeast

Ann D. Braude, Harvard Divinity School
The Other Camp of the Saints: Comparing Christian and Muslim Narratives of Global Expansion in the Modern Era Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University
What Happens Beyond Christendom?
Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame
Twentieth-Century Mission Studies and the Narrative of “World Christianity” Dana L. Robert, Boston University
The Audience

Comments

The Black Women's Intellectual History Project is sponsoring a session on Friday morning from 9:30-11:30 on transnational perspectives on black women's religious leadership. Jon Sensbach, Natasha Lightfoot, and Eve Troutt Powell will be giving papers.
Unknown said…
You also missed this one, Friday 2:30 to 4:30, with comment by Leigh Schmidt:

Cosmopolitanism and Religion in the Turn of the Twentieth Century U.S. Left
AHA Session 102
Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3
Friday, January 7, 2011: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM
Orleans Room (Marriott Boston Copley Place)
Chair:
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University
Papers:
“Has He Paused and Taken Thought?” Mark Twain's "War Prayer," Pacifism, and the Impact of Empathy
John Pettegrew, Lehigh University
Spiritual Unity, Social Progress: The National Federation of Religious Liberals and the Legacy of the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions
Amy Marie Kittelstrom, Sonoma State University
Holidays for Humanity's Future: Festivals at New York's Ethical Culture School, 1890–1920
Emily Mace, Princeton University
Comment:
Leigh Eric Schmidt, Harvard University
Randall said…
Here's another that Shawn Young just brought to my attention.


New Religions, Intentional Communities, and Society

AHA Session 14
Thursday, January 6, 2011: 3:00 PM-5:00 PM
Clarendon Room (Marriott Boston Copley Place)
Chair:
Elena Thompson, University of Maryland University College

Papers:

Innovations and Divisions in a New Religious Movement: New Voices
within Messianic Judaism
Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina

Antinomianism, Utopianism, and the Struggle for Community: The Case of
the American Hare Krishna Movement
Benjamin E. Zeller, Brevard College

Reliving the Jesus Movement: Cornerstone Festival and the Weekend Jesus Freak
Shawn David Young, Michigan State University

Coming Together and Falling Apart: “Independent”/Old Catholic
Churches, the Quest for Unity, and the Burden of the History of
American Intentional Religious Communities
Gregory Holmes Singleton, Northeastern Illinois University

Comment:
Jon Pahl, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
Anonymous said…
I really appreciate these tips - thank you. I'm a little surprised that the blog didn't note the Association for Jewish Studies conference which was earlier this week in Boston. There were some great panels on American religion there too.
Paul Harvey said…
Anonymous: Sorry about missing the Association for Jewish Studies Conference, I simply didn't know it was taking place -- of course we always invite readers to send in conference announcements and the like so we can get them up there, there's always too much going on for us to keep up with without some help. Thanks Judith and Amy for notes on the additional sessions.

Popular Posts