I've come out the other end of a very satisfying meeting of the American Academy of Religion. As a generalist, this conference gives me a chance to get a chance to dip into fields I've long followed and others that are new to me, or the field as a whole. But it's also more than a little bit of a crapshoot, since there may be scores of panels on at any given time, and the two or three panels you most want to attend will always wind up scheduled at the same time! 
Most of us opt not to have the 400-page (!) program book mailed to us, rather picking a copy up on
arriving at the convention center. Especially with the convenience of a searchable App, I think few of us look at most of the offerings, instead doing targeted searches on topics, fields, texts, scholars and friends we want to support. On registering I checked some of the program units which interest me, who kindly sent curated e-mail announcements of their offerings, and I confess that determined most of my choices. Here's my dance card, and some others which made my shortlist.
Teaching Religion Unit: Teaching Tactics
Plenary I: Exploring Nonviolence: Social Justice, Gender, and the Brain
Comparative Religious Ethics and Schleiermacher Units: "One Nation under...?" Nationalisms of the Religions of the World
Theology and Continental Philosophy Unit: Uprooting Thought: Religion and the Vegetal Turn
Anglican Studies Seminar
Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit: Christian Imaginations of the Other: The Impact of Religionization and Racialization on (Inter)Religious Studies
Religion and Ecology Unit: Rethinking Non-human Sentience and Sapience: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Academic Relations Committee, Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion, and Publications Committee: Podcasting Religious Studies
Religion and Ecology Unit: The Role of Violence/Non-violence in Relgiion and Ecology: Slow Violence, Radical Environmental Activism, and Theological Visions for our Shared Future
Artificial Intelligence and Religion Exploratory Session: Experiments in Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Societies and Religious Simulations
To leave time for the book exhibit, serendipitous meetings, coffee and last minute-tweaks for my own paper, I didn't go to sessions back-to-back. But since each of these panels involved multiple participants, my short list translates to nearly fifty presenters, not to mention the Q&A. Not all were as good as the best were, but I am sated!
