A30–302
Arts, Literature, and Religion Section and
Music and Religion Consultation
Saturday, 4:00 PM–6:30 PM
Marriott Marquis, Room M106–107*

Theodore Trost, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Presiding

Theme: Music of the American Southeast

This session brings into conversation musical traditions at home in, or broadly inspired by, the American Southeast. From issues of eschatology in albums by Gillian Welch and the band My Morning Jacket, to religious dimensions of hip-hop in KRS-One’s Higher Level, to the charismatic funk of Go-Go band Peculiar People, to “the messianic” in Tori Amos and rapper Illogic, these papers deal with sociological dimensions of contemporary music making — in particular, how these artists draw from the underside of life in prophetic and transformative ways.

Panelists:

Roy Whitaker, Claremont Graduate University
Hip-Hop as Sacred Canopy: KRS-One, Peter Berger, and La Frontera

Alisha Lola Jones, University of Chicago
In the Pocket: A Sacred Go-Go Beat Movement of Peculiar People

Jon Gill, Claremont Graduate University
The Ethereal Etched into the Existential: Auerbach and Benjamin’s Literary Philosophy as Displayed Theologically by Tori Amos and Illogic

M. Cooper Harriss, University of Chicago
A Sense of Ending: The Album, Narrative, and Eschatology in Time (the Revelator) and The Tennessee Fire

A1–105
North American Religions Section
Monday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM
Marriott Marquis, Room 101*

Paul Harvey, University of Colorado, Presiding

Theme: The Future of Southern Religious History

In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of scholars began to rewrite our understanding of the religious history of the South. Samuel Hill, Donald Mathews, Albert Raboteau, and Mechal Sobel examined white and black religious traditions in the region, setting them in new contexts and reopening what had seemed to be a “closed” history of white evangelical dominance and black suppression. Since then, employing tools from a variety of disciplines, scholars have opened up numerous research avenues in a quest to understand both historically and in the present this most religiously Protestant of American regions.

Our proposal is for a roundtable panel to assess, critique, and chart a future path for studies of religion in the South. We have chosen the panel/roundtable format to make our session one of dialogue between panelists and audience. To facilitate this dialogue, the comments from the panelists will be published and precirculated via a blog, which will both publicize the panel and get the panel “going” prior to the actual meeting itself.

Panelists:

Alison Greene, Yale University

Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University

Randall Stephens, Eastern Nazarene College

Curtis Evans, University of Chicago

Ted Ownby, University of Mississippi

Responding:

Lauren Winner, Duke University

Business Meeting:

Rudy V. Busto, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Kathleen Flake, Vanderbilt University, Presiding

*Room locations are subject to change. Please check your Program Book onsite to confirm the location when you arrive at the Annual Meeting.