Conference Co-chairs
 Izzak Novak is a doctoral student in American Religions. His research seeks out the unexpected ways religion surfaces in US culture. He is currently exploring what hunting can teach us about US religion and culture, as well as the ways US-Americans relate to the state. He is committed to laying bare lived realities using good-faith, three-dimensional depictions of his interlocutors and subjects. Broadly, he is interested in the legal negotiation of spirituality and religion; religious freedom and religion and the law; the religious work performed by children, adolescents, and young adults; the cultural heavy-lifting performed by parenting; the operationalization of young people’s futurities; and ethnographic, historical-ethnographic, micro-historical, and historical methodologies. Before coming to Northwestern, Izzak completed an A.A. in Humanities and Social Sciences at the County College of Morris, a B.A. in Religion at Columbia University, and an M.A. in Religion at Yale University. His advisor is Robert Orsi. |
 Juliana Sexauer is a JD-Ph.D. student in the Religious Studies department. Born and raised on traditional Dena’ina lands (Anchorage, Alaska), Juliana’s research explores the ways in which Western Christianity and American legal systems influence one another, as well as their impacts on Alaska Native communities. Her work focuses on these forces as they relate to late-20th-century missionary-run Indigenous boarding schools and the lasting effects the schools have had on Alaska Native families and villages. Juliana received her B.A. in Religious Studies and International Relations from Pacific Lutheran University in 2021. When she is not in class, Juliana can be found hanging out with her dog, Luna, and husband, Jack, probably listening to the latest episode of Normal Gossip. Juliana’s advisor is Elizabeth Shakman-Hurd. |
 Grace Christensen is a doctoral student in American religions. Her research interests focus on how women of the nineteenth century experienced and performed death, grief, and spiritual embodiment; how they imagined the afterlife; and for whom they imagined a heaven. She explores these interests through a historical, theological, and theoretical reading of Spiritualist literature, peeling back the layers of sentimentalist disquisition to reveal an eschatological confluence of gender, race, and class. The antebellum grave resounds with the question – who is deserving of heaven? Grace further hopes to ask how the intervening intersections of gender, race, and class shaped the Spiritualist experience of the afterlife. How did historical women create heaven in their own image? What were the spiritual, political, and interpersonal fruits of this endeavor? Grace’s M.A. thesis “‘Mystery Is as Old as Life’: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s Explorations of the Otherworldly” received honors. Her advisor is Robert Orsi. |
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Ray received his MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University. He has published peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Global Buddhism and Religion. He has also published academic essays in American Religion and The Revealer. In his free time, Ray writes for Lion’s Roar Magazine, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, and The Institute of Buddhist Studies’ Ten Thousand Things Blog. Ray is advised by Robert Orsi. |
Ray Buckner is a PhD Student in Religious Studies at Northwestern University. His dissertation project, titled “Queer and Transgender Buddhism in Thailand: Religious and Aesthetic Lives Beyond the Monastery,” analyzes the interventions of queer and transgender Thai Buddhist artists in Bangkok and Berlin. Examining vanguard films, paintings, flower arrangements, fashion, and drag performances, Ray’s project traces how queer and trans artists at once inherit and subvert orthodox Thai Buddhist views on queer desire and trans embodiment—forging their own Thai Buddhist practices that affirm queer and trans lives.