Elizabeth O'Brien, associate professor of history at UCLA and winner of the 2024 AAR Best First Book in the History of Religions Award, speaks to Kristian Petersen about her book, ⁠⁠Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

A recording of one of Leela Prasad's presidential plenaries, held at the 2025 AAR Annual Meeting in Boston.

Leela Prasad, Brown University, presiding

Speakers (in order of appearance):

• James Bowley
• Larissa Carneiro
• Koritha Mitchell, Boston University
• Laurie Louise Patton

Summary

In an era of faculty precarity, ideological polarization, and institutional histories of injustice, what does it mean to practice hope as an intellectual and political commitment? What strategies and choices make hope and freedom viable?

This panel explores hope not as naïve optimism, but as a form of sovereignty—a declaration of intellectual and ethical autonomy as well as accountability—in the face of everyday structural constraints, implicit and explicit (and old and new) hierarchies, censorship and surveillance, and professional vulnerability.

“Jesus saves” banners at the January 6th insurrection. Evangelical elevation of President Trump as God’s elect. Claims of religious freedom used to justify discrimination. Scriptural “prooftexts” wielded to strip individuals of civil rights. Growing affection in religious communities for authoritarian models of government.

Religion is playing significant roles in contemporary crises of democracy. How is it perceived in the public imagination and how can we as scholars advance public understanding of the stakes?

Rachel Mikva, the Herman E. Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary, moderates a discussion with Eddie Glaude, Robert Jones, and Katherine Stewart.

About the Panelists

• Robert Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023), as well as White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Jones writes regularly for The Atlantic, TIME, Religion News Service, and other outlets.
• Katherine Stewart has been covering the rise of the anti-democratic movement for over 16 years. Her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury 2025), is an instant New York Times bestseller. Her previous book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020), won First Place in the Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association, as well as a Morris B. Forkosch Best Book award.
• Eddie Glaude is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, take an exhaustive look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States, and the challenges we face as a democracy. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and is former president of the American Academy of Religion.

Max K. Strassfeld, associate professor of religion at the University of Southern California and winner of the ⁠2023 AAR Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies⁠, speaks to Kristian Petersen about their book, ⁠Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press, 2023).

Karen V. Guth, associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross and winner of the ⁠2023 AAR Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Constructive-Reflective Studies, speaks to Kristian Petersen about her book, ⁠The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

William Robert, professor of religion at Syracuse University and winner of the 2023 AAR Book Award in Religion and the Arts, speaks to Kristian Petersen about his book, Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance (The University of Chicago Press, 2022).

William Calvo-Quirós, associate professor of American culture at the University of Michigan and winner of the 2023 Best First Book in the History of Religions Award from AAR speaks to Kristian Petersen about his book, Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Mary Dunn — professor of Modern Christianity in the department of theological studies at Saint Louis University, director of the Center for Research on Global Catholicism, and winner of the 2023 AAR Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies — discusses her book Where Paralytics Walk and the Blind See with Kristian Petersen.