Sessions sponsored by the Eastern Orthodox Studies Group at the American Academy of Religion

American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting
San Diego, CA
November 22-25, 2014

Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: Georges Florovsky and Changing Paradigms of Modern Orthodox Theology

Brandon Gallaher, University of Oxford, Presiding

Saturday - 4:00 PM-6:30 PM

Hilton Bayfront-310A

Church historian, philosopher, and modern Orthodox thinker, Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) is widely viewed as the mastermind of a “return to the Church Fathers” in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. Perhaps best known for his monumental study The Ways of Russian Theology, Florovsky’s theological vision—the neopatristic synthesis—has been embraced, though not without controversy, as the golden standard of Eastern Orthodox identity in the West. This roundtable discusses Paul Gavrilyuk’s new reading of Florovsky’s neopatristic theology in his recently published book Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religions Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2013). Panelists include Matthew Baker (Fordham University), George Hunsinger (Princeton Theological Seminary), Cyril O'Regan (University of Notre Dame), Vera Shevzov (Smith College), and Brandon Gallaher (University of Oxford), moderator. The session includes a response by the author.

Panelists:

Matthew Baker, Fordham University

George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

Cyril J. O'Regan, University of Notre Dame

Vera Shevzov, Smith College

Responding:

Paul Gavrilyuk, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN

Business Meeting:

Aristotle Papanikolaou, Fordham University

Vera Shevzov, Smith College

 Eastern Orthodox Studies Group, Middle Eastern Christianity Group, and World Christianity Group

Theme: Middle Eastern Christians, Collective Memory, and the “Arab Spring”

Nelly Van Doorn-Harder, Wake Forest University, Presiding

Sunday - 5:00 PM-6:30 PM

Convention Center-29A

This panel contextualizes the “Arab Spring” in light of other historical seasons during the twentieth and twenty-first century in which Middle Eastern Christians have creatively reasserted their identity. The session will search for patterns in the ways Middle Eastern Christian communities have constituted their collective memory in specific nationalistic and revolutionary episodes of modernity in order to gain insight into recent Christian activity in the “Arab Spring.”

Deanna Womack, Princeton Theological Seminary

The Syrian Protestant Nahda: Evangelical Faith in the Springtime of Arabic Literary Production, 1860-1915

Tamar Wasoian, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Syrian Armenians and the Arab Spring: Haunting Memories of the Genocide

Hiroko Miyokawa, National Institutes for the Humanities, Tokyo, Japan

The Establishment of the Coptic Museum and its Nationalization in twentieth-century Egypt

Michel Andraos, Catholic Theological Union

From "Persecuted Minorities" to Native Peoples: The New Discourse of Christian Communities in the Levant

Gaetan du Roy, Université catholique de Louvain

The Charismatic Movement and Coptic Activists in the Egyptian Revolution

Responding: Rico Gabriel Monge, University of San Diego

Women and Religion Section and Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: (En)gendered Power: The Crafting of Socio-Religious Female Identity in Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Rosemary R. Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, Presiding

Monday - 1:00 PM-3:30 PM

Convention Center-33B

The four papers in this panel, through their theoretical examinations of ethnographic research, explore the tensions felt and issues faced by Eastern Orthodox laywomen, and how these women make use of the social, ritual, and material aspects of the Church and built environments—public, private, and digital—to help construct personal and communal understandings of the female Orthodox self, while speaking to larger ontological conversations that are happening in the academy today. Focusing on how Orthodox women construct their socio-religious identities in distinct spheres of being, the works presented offer an examination of space, place, and gender, while consciously seeking to open up a larger dialogue on the roles of women in conservative transnational Christian traditions. Critical to all of these papers is the idea of how women use particular spaces and places as a means through which they gain socio-religious agency, power, and standing in their communities.

Rosanne Morici, Syracuse University

Photography, Power, and Post-Iconoclastic Seeing in the Russian Church-Museum

Sarah Riccardi, Missouri State University

Enshrining Gender: The Role of Home Icon Corners in the Configuration of the Female Orthodox Self

Elena Kravchenko, University of Texas

Constructing an Orthodox Self: Overlapping Authority and Diverging Desire in the Veneration of Icons and their Referents

Aaron Sokoll, University of California, Santa Barbara

(Un)official Authority: The Case of the Female Diaconate among Evangelical-turned-Orthodox Women

Responding:

Nadieszda Kizenko, University at Albany

 

 

Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: Ecological Theology

Peter Galadza, Saint Paul University, Presiding

Tuesday - 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Convention Center-29C

Ecological theology that draws on Eastern Christian sources, patristic and contemporary. Papers will engage some aspect of the Eastern Christian tradition in thinking about questions, themes and issues related to ecological theology.

Zachary Ugolnik, Columbia University

The Nature of Oil: Oil and Its Implications in the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian

Andrew M. Sharp, University of Virginia

Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and the Environment: The Case for a New Sacred Science

Ekaterini Tsalampouni, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

A New Heaven and a New Earth: An Orthodox Eco-exegetical Approach of Apocalyptic Biblical Texts

Responding:

Christina M. Gschwandtner, Fordham University