AAR is next weekend, and I thought it might be helpful to have an open thread where we could gather together panels featuring blog regulars or else topics of particular interest.
I’ll start: I’m going to be part of a panel on the Body of Christ on Monday from 1:00 to 3:30, where I’ll be presenting on Zizek’s use of that concept.
An und für sich 
Okay, I guess crowd-sourcing this isn’t going to work.
Maybe nobody’s going this year. General strike against the AAR!!
I think there should be a general strike against SBL instead, in solidarity with the sausage-fest of Roland Boer…
Besides panels with colleagues/friends and plenaries, I’m interested in the ‘Teaching Religion’ panels (A30-108, A1-110); Making the Case for the Importance of Religion (A30-300); Religion, Film, and Visual Culture (A30-326); Religion and Politics (A31-105); Pyschology, Culture, and Religion (A31-224); Theology and Continental Philosophy, Theology and the Political (A31-328); Schleiermacher (A1-129), Theology and Continental Philosophy (A1-131); Philosophy of Religion (A1-207).
One of the professors from my (philosophy) program, who is also the director of a special library collection at Duquesne, is going to present on one of the Theology and Continental Philosophy panels. He’s giving an account of affect, and makes a good critique of Milbank. I’ve had the chance to read his paper, although I’m not going to AAR. Since I’m not a theologian, but rather a poor student, there’s no reason to go, other than I sort of wanted to.
Looking forward to some reports, though.
Yes, seconding Dave, go see the paper of Jeff McCurry.
This reply is stretching the rules of the post, since I’m hardly a “blog regular”–more like frequent lurker who has posted a couple of replies. That said, I’ll go ahead and shamelessly plug the sessions in which I’m presenting papers: A30-133 (the Space, Place, and Religious Meaning Consultation) and A30-209 (the Religion, Memory, History Consultation in conjunction with the Religion and Politics Section). Both papers involve analyses of Palestinian refugee construals of place and return. The first paper is not explicitly theological, and involves a discussion of Edward Said, cartographic theory, and Palestinian refugee mapping of exile and return. The second paper looks at rituals of return to the sites of destroyed Palestinian villages and gets explicitly theological at the end of the paper, with some discussion of Jean-Yves Lacoste on the liturgical disruption of topology. OK, shameless self-promotion is now over.
I’m late seeing this, but I’ll be offering a response to Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s excellent book Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe for the Bible, Theology and Postmodernity Group (A31-312) on Sunday late afternoon (5-6:30pm).
I am unable to go this year…
I will be there. I am not giving any papers (Although I am attending a “working group!” Yay!) but look forward to some of the above-named sessions, and to seeing old friends. Who else will be in attendance, who is not giving a paper? (APS? Dan Barber?)