Religious & Biblical Superstars Gather at McCormick Place

Have you ever wanted to meet one of the authors on any your syllabi? What about hearing a presentation by Kwok Pui Lan, Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Gail Yee, Harvey Cox, Musa Dube, Elaine Pagels, N.T. Wright, Anna Case-Winters, or Frank Yamada? Or hear what scholars are currently thinking about the historical Jesus, meals in the ancient world, Asian-American hermeneutics, Israelite religion, warfare in ancient Israel, biblical law, or deuteronomistic history? On Nov 17-20 you can! 

The annual meeting of two of America’s oldest learned societies, the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, is in Chicago this year, November 17-20. Most of the sessions are at McCormick Place, easily accessible from Hyde Park by the Metra.

You can join one of the societies and register for the meeting for about $150 (student rate) to receive a name badge that will let you into the book exhibit and a hard copy of the meeting schedule. Or you can just look through the online schedules at www.sbl-site.org (click on “annual meeting”) or www.aarweb.org and attend any session that you would like without a name badge. 

This year’s highlights include Presidential addresses by Otto Maduro (“Reflections on Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics in the Study of the Religious ‘Stranger’”) and John Dominic Crossan (“A Vision of Divine Justice: The Resurrection of Jesus in Eastern Christian Iconography”). Ivone Gebara from Brazil will speak on “Knowing the Human, Knowing the Divine for the Human: Perspectives from Vulnerable Corners of Today’s World.” There will be panel discussion of various new books including Sheppard’s Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology; Eboo Patel’s Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America; Jean-Luc Marion’s In the Self’s Place: The Approach of St. Augustine; Dube’s, Mbuvi’s and Mbuwayesango’s Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, and Kwok Pui Lan’s and Joerg Rieger’s Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude. There is will also be a 1/3 scale model display of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling frescoes, and screenings and discussion of several new films with religious themes.

Basically, it’s huge. And in Chicago. Nov 17-20.