Special Invited Guests

Jane Bennett is professor of political theory and Chair of the department of political science at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2001) and Thoreau’s Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002). She is the coeditor of The Politics of Moralizing (with Michael J. Shapiro, Routledge, 2002) and In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics, and the Environment (with William Chaloupka, University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Panelist:
A23-203
Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things

Saturday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

Judith Butler is the Maxine Elliott Professor in the rhetoric and comparative literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a family of Hungarian and Russian ancestry. As a child and teenager, she attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics where she received her “first training in philosophy.” Butler received her PhD in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France (Columbia University Press, 1999). Her research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, and feminist and sexuality studies to nineteenth and twentieth century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, mourning and war. Her most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy, exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence. In 2009 Butler received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award for her contributions to humanistic inquiry.

Responding:
A25-313
Judith Butler's Parting Ways (Columbia University Press, 2012)

Monday, 4:00 PM–6:30 PM
Convention Center – 307-308*
 

Sister Joan D. Chittister, O.S.B. is a Benedictine nun, author, and speaker. A member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, where she served as prioress for twelve years, Chittister is an author and lecturer. She also writes a web column for the National Catholic Reporter, entitled "From Where I Stand." Chittister holds a master's degree from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in speech communication theory from Pennsylvania State University. She writes and speaks on women in the church and society, human rights, peace and justice in the areas of war and poverty, and religious life and spirituality. She is co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, a UN-sponsored organization creating a worldwide network of women peacemakers. She is also the founder of Benetvision—her public presentations are announced on the Benetvision website. She has authored fifty books and her articles have been prinetd in numerous journals and magazines, including America, U.S. Catholic, Sojourners, Spirituality (Dublin), and The Tablet (London). Chittister has thirteen Catholic Press Association awards, the most recent being three in June, 2012, for her books The Monastery of the Heart: An Invitation to a Meaningful Life (Bluebridge, 2011) and Happiness (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011).

Panelist:
A23-301
Plenary Panel: Pope Francis and the State of Global Catholicism

Saturday, 4:00 PM–6:30PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

William E. Connolly is a political theorist known for his work on democracy and pluralism. He is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His 1974 work The Terms of Political Discourse won the 1999 Benjamin Lippincott Award and is widely held to be a major work of political theory. Connolly received his BA from the University of Michigan, Flint, and received his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Connolly took up a professorship in 1985 at Johns Hopkins University and was the department chair for political science from 1996–2003. In 2004, he won the Fulbright Award to deliver the keynote address at the Kyoto Conference in Japan. Connolly is also a founding member of the journal Theory and Event.

Panelist:
A23-203
Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things

Saturday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

Daniel Deudney is an American political scientist and associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. His published work is mainly in the fields of international relations and political theory, with an emphasis on geopolitics and republicanism. Deudney graduated from Yale University in 1975 with a BA in political science and philosophy. He holds an MPA in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University. In 1989, he graduated from Princeton University with an MA and PhD in political science. During the late 1970s Deudney worked for three years as the senior legislative assistant for energy and environment and legislative director to Senator John Durkin (D-NH). His most recent book is Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton University Press, 2006). It received the 2008 Robert Jervis and Paul Schroeder Award for the best book on international history and politics, International History and Politics Section, American Political Science Association, as well as the 2010 ISA Book of the Decade Award in international studies from the International Studies Association.

Panelist:
A23-203
Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things

Saturday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

Eugene Joseph Dionne Jr. is an American journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a university professor in the foundations of democracy and culture at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a senior research fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator. Dionne is also a columnist for Commonweal, a liberal Catholic publication. He holds a BA in social studies from Harvard University (1973), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was affiliated with Adams House, and has a DPhil in sociology from Balliol College, Oxford (1982), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Dionne’s published works include the influential 1991 bestseller Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon and Schuster, 1991), which argued that several decades of political polarization was alienating a silent centrist majority. Later books include They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon and Schuster, 1996); Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (Simon and Schuster, 2004); Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (Princeton University Press, 2008); and Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Panelist:
A25-108
What Americans Want from Immigration Reform: Insights from the PRRI/Brookings Religion, Values, and Immigration Survey

Monday, 9:00AM–11:30AM
Convention Center – 307-308*

William A. Galston holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s governance studies program, where he serves as a senior fellow. A former policy advisor to President Clinton and presidential candidates, he is an expert on domestic policy, political campaigns, and elections. His current research focuses on designing a new social contract and the implications of political polarization. Galston is also College Park Professor at the University of Maryland. Prior to January 2006, he was Saul Stern Professor and acting dean at the school of public policy at the University of Maryland, director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal—cochaired by William Bennett and Sam Nunn. A participant in six presidential campaigns, Galston served from 1993 to 1995 as deputy assistant on domestic policy to President Clinton. He is the author of eight books and more than one hundred articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics. His most recent books are Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Public Matters (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). A winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert H. Humphrey Award, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Panelist:
A25-108
What Americans Want from Immigration Reform: Insights from the PRRI/Brookings Religion, Values, and Immigration Survey

Monday, 9:00AM–11:30AM
Convention Center – 307-308*

John Saint Helier Gibaut, from the Anglican Church of Canada, heads the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on Faith and Order. A scholar specializing in liturgical and historical theology, Gibaut has extensive ecumenical experience, particularly in the area of national and international bilateral church dialogues. He teaches at the faculty of theology of Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. The Commission on Faith and Order is mandated to study questions of faith, church order, and worship—which bear on the unity of the church—and also to examine social, cultural, political, racial, and other factors that affect that unity. The 120-member commission, which includes representatives of WCC member churches and nonmember churches—such as the Roman Catholic Church—has been called the most representative church-based theological forum in the world.

Panelist:
A24-310
Toward a Common Vision of the Church: Global and Comparative Perspectives on Faith and Order's Groundbreaking Convergence Document

Sunday, 5:00PM–6:30PM
Hilton Baltimore – Key 4*

David M. Halperin is an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, critical theory, material culture, and visual culture. He is the cofounder of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies and served as its editor until 2006. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1973, having studied abroad at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in 1972–1973. He received his PhD in classics and humanities from Stanford University in 1980. He is currently the W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor of the history and theory of sexuality at the University of Michigan, where he is also professor of English, women’s studies, comparative literature, and classical studies.

Responding:
A23-225
How to be Gay (Harvard University Press, 2012) in Religious Studies: David Halperin and His Critics

Saturday, 1:00PM–3:30PM
Hilton Baltimore – Key 3*

Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. A comparativist by training, she was educated at Brown University, where she received her BA, MA, and PhD. Her scholarly work has been devoted to feminist theory, the study of memory (www.postmemory.net), and the intersections of literature and visual culture. Hirsch has worked on French, German, Romanian, British, and North American writers and artists. She values and practices collaborative and interdisciplinary writing, research, and teaching. She is the author of five books and editor or coeditor of eleven books or journal issues. Her recent publications include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012); Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (written with Leo Spitzer, University of California Press, 2010); and Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory (coedited with Nancy K. Miller, Columbia University Press, 2011). With Diana Taylor, Hirsch edited the 2012 double issue of e-misférica: The Subject of Archives. Hirsch is one of the founders of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference and is codirector, with Jean Howard, of its new global initiative—Women Creating Change. She is currently serving as president of the Modern Language Association.

Panelist:
A24-283
The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012): A Conversation with Marianne Hirsch

Sunday, 3:00PM–4:30PM
Hilton Baltimore – Johnson A*

Timothy Morton is professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. A member of the object-oriented philosophy movement, Morton's work explores the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecological studies. In 2010, he coined the term “hyperobjects” to explain objects so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend localization—such as climate change and styrofoam. Morton studied English literature at Oxford University (BA and DPhil) and then did postdoctoral work at Princeton University. He is currently writing Dark Ecology and Buddhaphobia, two studies of philosophy and culture in the global nineteenth century. He is the author of Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities Press, 2013); Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming); The Ecological Thought (Harvard University Press, 2010); and Ecology without Nature (Harvard University Press, 2007). He has published seven other books, all of which are about issues and authors in the Romantic period (for example, Frankenstein, Percy Shelley, Romantic-period food and eating, and radicalism).

Panelist:
A23-203
Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things

Saturday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

Ivan Petrella is an Argentine social theorist and liberation theologian. He is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami and coexecutive editor of the “Reclaiming Liberation Theology” book series with SCM Press. Petrella holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a MTS from Harvard University, and a PhD in religion and law from Harvard University’s Committee on the Study of Religion in the graduate school of arts and sciences. As an Argentine liberation theologian who is also agnostic, Petrella’s scholarship cuts across religious studies departments and divinity schools, the United States and Latin America, and theology and the social sciences. He is particularly interested in bridging the divide between different liberation theologies, including Black theology, Latin American liberation theology, Womanist theology, and Hispanic/Latino(a) theology.

Panelist:
A23-301
Plenary Panel: Pope Francis and the State of Global Catholicism

Saturday, 4:00 PM–6:30PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the senior religion editor for the Huffington Post. From 2003–2011 he was the associate dean of religious life and the chapel at Princeton University. An ordained American Baptist minister, Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches, and institutes around the country. His first book was Teen Spirit: One World, Many Paths (HCI Teens, 2004). He is the editor of the 100th anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch's book Christianity and the Social Crisis in the Twenty-first Century (HarperOne, 2007). His work as codirector of the program on religion, diplomacy, and international relations at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University included strengthening the interfaith community on campus.

Panelist:
A23-302
Making (the Study of) Religion Online: New Media and the Study of Religion

Saturday, 4:00PM–6:30PM
Convention Center – 329*

Thomas J. Reese, S.J. is an American Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, author, and former editor-in-chief of America, a weekly Catholic magazine. Reese resigned after seven years as the editor of America due to pressure from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Vatican. Over a period of five years, the congregation objected to various editorial decisions made by Reese concerning certain issues addressed in the magazine, notably priestly celibacy and the ordination of women. Following his resignation, Reese spent a year-long sabbatical at Santa Clara University before being named a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, DC.

Panelist:
A23-301
Plenary Panel: Pope Francis and the State of Global Catholicism

Saturday, 4:00 PM–6:30PM
Convention Center – 307-308*

William A. Richards is a psychologist in the psychiatry department of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Bayview Medical Center. He is currently pursuing research with entheogens and has a private practice in Baltimore. His graduate degrees include a MDiv from Yale University, a STM from Andover-Newton Theological School, and a PhD from Catholic University. Richards also studied with Abraham Maslow at Brandeis University and with Hanscarl Leuner at Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany, where his involvement with psilocybin research originated in 1963.

Panelist:
A24-309
The Rebirth of Entheogens: New Medical Research on Drug-Related Mystical Experience and its Implications for Religious Studies

Sunday, 5:00 PM–6:30 PM
Convention Center – 332*

Daniel Sperber is the Milan Roven Professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and an expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish art history, Jewish education, and Talmudic studies. He studied for rabbinical ordination at Yeshivat Kol Torah in Israel, earned a doctorate from University College London in the departments of ancient history and Hebrew studies. Sperber is the author of Minhagei Yisrael: Origins and History (Mossad Harav Kook, 2002), on the character and evolution of Jewish customs. He has written extensively on many issues regarding how Jewish law can and has evolved. This includes a work in which he calls for a greater inclusion of women in certain ritual services. He is also the President of the Ludwig and Erica Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. Sperber serves as rabbi of Menachem Zion Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Panelist:
A24-114
Mapping Hindu–Jewish Encounters: From Embodied Communities to the Issue of Idolatry

Sunday, 9:00AM–11:30AM
Hilton Baltimore – Holiday 3*