AAR/WR 2025 Annual Conference

Performing Religions, Faith, and Spirituality

AAR/WR 2025 Annual Conference

March 16-18, 2025

Arizona State University

Conference Theme by Roberta Sabbath, Ph.D., President-Elect:

Religious Studies intersects with every aspect of our lives: political, spiritual, pastoral, creative, performative, and relational. The study of religious life, thought, and practice touches upon our identities, responsibilities, and cultures. It can help us to explore our own selves as we acknowledge the diversity of religious expression across time and space.
The American Academy of Religion-Western Region has always embraced the diversity of such expressivity -- whether through academics, artistry, leadership, or other praxis domains. This year at Arizona State University March 14-16, 2025, we would like to continue in that tradition.
Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. This year, AAR-WR takes inspiration from its location for its 2025 theme, acknowledging both the exciting prospects and serious concerns that the future holds, and broadcasting a vision of hope about new opportunities for appreciating one another as individuals and communities.
Attendees at the 2024 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conference made clear their preference: Expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology. We encourage you to share with us your work relating to the varieties of eclectic, particular, indigenous, diasporic, ancient, and novel religious practices.
Religious expression as interactive and technologically-innovative performance was viscerally realized in 2024 at UNLV in Anna Hennessey’s immersive Re-Birth installation. We hope to build on that by encouraging further performative expressions of faith and joy, such as drumming, call & response, singing, dancing, all of which will be part of a unique session.
We also want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. Science and technology have always grown out of human performance and imagination. Mythology around science, grounded in different religious orientations, continues to fuel innovation and interaction with the novel and unexplored. Science-fiction and fantasy are also part of this vision and its intersections with religious ideation. We invite similar explorations into the future and the unknown.
We encourage you to use contemporary media, performance, and scholarship to share your discoveries with us at ASU in 2025. We encourage you to reach out to other units to co-sponsor and collaborate in developing robust and innovative calls for papers.
We are very excited about our being together at Arizona State University!

Host or Publisher AAR Western Region