with C, another ex-student and friend, here for her first AAR) futzing over my paper for the Confucian Studies Group. Needn't have bothered, really; the discussion, at nine Saturday morning, wasn't interested in the mainly methodological questions I raised. I went to a few panels the rest of the day, meeting my old friend B for dinner, and LA friends R and A with H and her husband after. Sunday was similar, though I started with a few hours at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I was delighted to find the vessel at right - identified as a gu! (But if it's in a glass case in an art museum, is it really a gu?). And today, I met ex-colleague A for breakfast, went to one panel, finished my survey of the book fair, had coffee with B, another old classmate friend, and headed to the airport. It was practically over before it started!Don't want to give the impression it wasn't an edifying excursion (except for my panel, which was really not terribly productive for anyone concerned). It was, as ever, lovely to spend time with old friends from graduate school, as well as other acquaintances and colleagues - and even a few ex-students! - from over the years. It is a sort of homecoming for the lone religious studies scholar exiled in an institution tone-deaf to religion and unaware of the existence of the discipline which has grown to study it. It was interesting to discern trends in the field (or at least in publishing) in the book displays - every publisher had a new book on Darwin, religion and science, if not several; books on secularism were common too. Fun to attend panels, even if none was a good as the best I've attended in years past, and learn about new things, like sociologists' efforts to
define and quantify "spiritual capital," how Spinoza and Hobbes contributed to rendering the Bible just another book, a Brazilian gay theological reading of Frida Kahlo's painting of the wounded deer (left), Charles Long's idea that the others to European Enlightenment are the best guides to understanding the Wholly Other of Chicago-style Religionswissenschaft and vice versa, David Tracy's latest thoughts on the infinite, the "indecent theology" of Marcella Althaus-Reid, how British maps of India contributed to intercommunal conflict, and vice versa, John Milbank's assertion that only Christendom (!) can solve the problems of "secularism as such"... As ever, the most interesting panels were at times I couldn't go - during my panel (the first ever panel on Transhumanism & Religion!), or after I had to leave for the airport (Darwin in American religious thought) - perfect excuse to write to the presenters, though!None of it seems very important compared to what's likely to happen in Chicago tomorrow, nay, throughout the land... Can't wait!
