AAR Centennial Roundtable

THE AMERICAN LECTURES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS (ALHR) boasts an illustrious record of lecturers and publications that stretches back to 1898. Some of the most important books to result from the lectures include ground-breaking and still popular works such as Peter Brown's The Body and Society (1988), Carolyn Walker Bynum's The Resurrection of the Body (1995), Wendy Doniger's The Implied Spider (updated 2011), and Bruce Lawrence's New Faiths, Old Fears (2002). In 2009, after a short hiatus, the American Academy of Religion revived the ALHR by experimenting with a new form; consequently, we are utilizing a new form of publication, a roundtable in the JAAR. In honour of the Centennial of the AAR, two “Centennial Scholars and Artists Panels” were convened during the 2009 and 2010 Annual Meetings, during which scholars, poets, and filmmakers discussed the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and debt for the way we think about and do the “history of religions.” The History of Religions Jury worked with an understanding of their charge as that of facilitating history of religions scholarship in the broadest possible sense, and went further by inviting artists to reflect on the same questions that we put to esteemed colleagues in the AAR. On one level, the panels furnished an opportunity to think comparatively about how scholars within the developing field of the history of religions were both participants and critics as “religion” was at play in the social imaginaries and political realities of colonialism, slavery, and markets. On another level, the panels were moving performances of how diverse forms of address—poetry, storytelling, the didactic lecture—can stimulate historical, critical thinking. The program of the ALHR continues today as a lecture series that brings a notable scholar of religion to a set of colleges and universities within a particular region.

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