2019 AAR Presidential Address by Laurie Patton - “And Are We Not of Interest to Each Other?”

A Blueprint for the Public Study of Religion. In addition to its traditional goal of fostering excellence in the academic study of religion, the AAR’s recently revised mission statement includes a new goal of enhancing the public study of religion. But what is the public study of religion? How might we collectively (and inevitably imperfectly) define it? This AAR address will offer a blueprint. I suggest that such a public study of religion involves a renewed curiosity about, and disciplined and ethical reflection on, four things: 1) the nature of our scholarly contexts; 2) the nature of our scholarly publics; 3) the nature of power and privilege in the study of religion; 4) the nature of labor in the study of religion. I will use theory in the study of religion, philosophy of the public sphere, and poetry to draw the blueprint. As a way of gesturing to another kind of collective that moves beyond the “magisterial voice of the single leader,” our time together will involve AAR voices other than my own. I end with an exhortation to a newly energetic and different kind of curiosity as fundamental to our work as public scholars. In her poem, “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe,” Elizabeth Alexander ends with a query: “. . . and are we not of interest to each other?” José I. Cabezón , University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding Panelists: Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.

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