Conference Schedule
2024 Graduate Conference on Intimacy and Desire in the Study of Religion
Presented by the Religious Studies Graduate Student Association of Northwestern University
Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Drive, 2nd Floor, Lake Room | Map
October 26, 2024
Opening Remarks
9:15am-9:30am
Panel 1: Intimacies of Land
9:30am-11:00am
- Sadaf Ahmed: Our parents never said “I love you”: Grammars of Intimacy in Muslim Canada
- Tsiona Lida, Harvard University: Sacral subjecthood: On Desire in Abraham Isaac Kook’s Zionism
- Jeffrey Sánchez, Stanford University: Risky Business(es): Botanica’s, Public Health, and the Mis/understanding of Latinx Religion
Break
11:00am-11:15am
Panel 2: Reading Intimacies
11:15am-12:45pm
- Jeffrey Ng, Harvard Divinity School: Embracing the Erotic: The Interplay of Celibacy and Fangzhongshu in Chinese Religious Traditions
- Haseena Sahib and Alina Pokhrel: Intimacy as One, Intimacy as Empty: A Comparative Reading of Sufi and Buddhist Poetry
- Zhujun Ma, Brown University: Practicing Intimacy in the Textual Devotional Communities: The Deity-Human Relationships in Precious Scrolls about the Goddess of Mount Tai in Early Modern China
Lunch
12:45pm-2:00pm
Panel 3: Digital and Media Intimacies
2:00pm-3:30pm
- Zainab Khalid, Queen’s University: Sexuality of Absences: Feminine Embodiment in Sufi Practices of Desire
- Cella Masso-Rivetti, Columbia University: Romance’s Horrors in The Thorn Birds: The Production of American Desire in Catholic Fiction
- Abtsam Saleh, Harvard University: The Power and Peril of Influence: Exploring Digital intimacies, Spiritual Abuse, and Accountability
Break
3:30pm-4:00pm
Keynote #1: Mona Oraby, Howard University
4:00pm-5:00pm
October 27, 2024
Panel 4: Sensorial Intimacies
9:30am-10:45am
- Amber Stanford, Princeton University: The “Noise” of Prophet Jones
- Hafiz Muhammad Bilal: Exploring Intimacy and Desire in Pakistani Madrasa Education
Break
10:45am-11:00am
Panel 5: Scholarly Intimacies
11:00am-12:30pm
- Febi R. Ramadhan, Northwestern University: The Tale of a Suffocated Fish: Muslims with Same-Sex Attraction and the Impossibility of Queer Possibilities
- Ali Yıldırım, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities: Transcending Gender, Becoming Can: Intimate Scenes from a Fieldwork
- Karis Ryu, Yale University: Dreaming as Method, Dreaming as Solidarity: Thoughts on Ethnographic Partnership
Lunch
12:30pm-1:45pm
Keynote #2: Omar Kasmani, Freie Universität Berlin
1:45pm-2:45pm
Keynote and Audience Conversation
2:45pm-3:45pm