Professor Richard Miller’s scholarship has spanned a wide range of topics and themes, from the ethics of war and peace earlier in his career to his more recent reflection on the ends toward which the academic study of religion is ordered. Throughout his career, Professor Miller has maintained that the study of religion can and should promote our efforts to think both critically and constructively, especially in relation to our political, social, and cultural lives with one another. His work routinely aims to expand the moral imagination about the ideals, limits, and opportunities in personal, cultural, and political life, often challenging mainstream ideas in moral theory and the study of religion.

Religion, Social Criticism, and the Moral Imagination

November 11-12, 2024
Swift Hall
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Professor Richard Miller’s scholarship has spanned a wide range of topics and themes, from the ethics of war and peace earlier in his career to his more recent reflection on the ends toward which the academic study of religion is ordered. Throughout his career, Professor Miller has maintained that the study of religion can and should promote our efforts to think both critically and constructively, especially in relation to our political, social, and cultural lives with one another. His work routinely aims to expand the moral imagination about the ideals, limits, and opportunities in personal, cultural, and political life, often challenging mainstream ideas in moral theory and the study of religion.

Monday

1:30-2pm: Registration and coffee

2pm: Welcome
James T. Robinson, Dean of the Divinity School 

2:15-3:45pm: Session I: 1 paper @ 45 minutes, followed by discussion [90 mins total]
Speaker: Professor Aaron Stalnaker, Indiana University
Paper Title: “Relating Ethics and the Study of Religion: Alternative Possibilities” 
Moderator: Anna Stoneman

4:00-5:30: Session II: 1 paper @ 45 minutes followed by discussion [90 mins total]
Speaker: Professor Raissa von Doetinchem de Rande, University of Chicago  
Paper Title: “Critical Humanism and the Study of Islamic Ethics—Challenges and Promises”
Moderator: Daniel Stanley

Tuesday

8:30-9am:   Registration and coffee

9:00–10:30am, Session III: 1 paper @ 45 minutes followed by discussion [90 mins total]
Speaker: Professor Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University
Paper Title: “The Humanities and the Moral Imagination”
Moderator: Kristi del Vecchio

10:45–12:15 Session IV: 1 paper @ 45 minutes, followed by discussion [90 mins total]
Speaker: Professor Simeon Ilesanmi Wake Forest University 
Paper Title: “Comparative Ethics and the Myth of Cultural Uniqueness: A Dialogical Essay on Richard B. Miller and African Moral Traditions” 
Moderator: Kat Myers 

12:30–1:15pm:  Lunch in the Common Room

1:30-2:45, Session V: 4 short papers on pedagogy, followed by discussion [75 mins total]
Participants: Derek Buyan, Ranana Dine, Colin Weaver, Zachary Taylor 
Moderator: Zachary Taylor 

3:00-4:30 Session VI: 1 paper @ 45 minutes, followed by discussion [90 mins]
Speaker: Professor Lisa Sideris, University of California, Santa Barbara
Paper Title: “Critical Humanism and Environmental Ethics: What Are Scholars For?”
Moderator: Johanna Holbrook 

4:45-5:30: Address by Professor Richard B. Miller: “Principles and Purposes in the Study of Religion, Politics, and Ethics”

5:30-6:30: Reception in the Common Room

Paper Titles and Presenter Bios

Aaron Stalnaker
Title: “Relating Ethics and the Study of Religion: Alternative Possibilities”

Bio: Aaron Stalnaker is professor and chair of Religious Studies at Indiana University, with courtesy appointments in Philosophy and East Asian Languages and Cultures. He has written two book-length studies in comparative religious ethics, both extensively engaging early Chinese sources: Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority (Oxford, 2020) and Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Georgetown, 2006). He has also published articles in venues such as the Journal of Religious Ethics, Soundings, Philosophy East and West, Dao, and International Philosophical Quarterly. He founded the Comparative Religious Ethics group within the American Academy of Religion and is currently a trustee of the Journal of Religious Ethics. His current research concerns the ambiguity of religious ethical discourse and the various reasons for its potential corruption, drawing on early Chinese conceptions of daos or ways of life, sociological theories of power, and recent work on resentment and other morally loaded emotions and their effects on thought and action. 

Raissa von Doetinchem De Rande
Title: “Critical Humanism and the Study of Islamic Ethics—Challenges and Promises”

Bio: Raissa de Rande is an Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her research and teaching focus on the study of Islamic ethics in its historical, methodological, and constructive aspects. Her first book, The Politics of Islamic Ethics, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in spring 2025.

Kevin Schilbrack
Title: “The Humanities and the Moral Imagination”

Bio: Kevin Schilbrack is professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the Appalachian State University. A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School, he writes about philosophical questions raised by the academic study of religion. He is the author of Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Blackwell, 2014) and the contributing editor to Thinking through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives (Routledge, 2004) and Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives (Routledge, 2002). His current research explores the relevance of embodied cognition and social ontology for understanding what religion is and how it works. He is now writing A Philosophy of Religious Practice for Cambridge University Press.

Simeon Ilesanmi
Title: “Comparative Ethics and the Myth of Cultural Uniqueness: A Dialogical Essay on Richard B. Miller and African Moral Traditions” 

Bio: Simeon O. Ilesanmi is a University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Wake Forest University. A former Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at Princeton University and a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, he has published extensively on human rights, the ethics of war, and religion and law, with a particular focus on Africa. His most recent book, African Conceptions of Dignity (2024) was co-edited with Brett G. Scarffs and M. Christian Green.  He is currently at work on a book entitled Precarious Dignity: Religion, Politics, and the Ethics of Human Rights in Africa and on a co-edited volume, New Frontiers in African Political Theology (Routledge).

Lisa Sideris
Title: “Critical Humanism and Environmental Ethics: What Are Scholars For?”

Bio: Lisa H. Sideris is Professor and Vice-Chair in Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliation in the Religious Studies Department. Her research focuses on the ethical significance of natural processes and how “environmental” values are captured or obscured by perspectives from religion and the sciences. She is author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia University Press, 2003) and Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (University of California Press, 2017). She has written extensively on environmental pioneer Rachel Carson and co-edited an interdisciplinary collection of essays titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY 2008). She serves as President of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.