2026 SESSIONS
2026 Women's Caucus Programming
(Click here for PDF)
Pre-Conference Gathering - Friday, November 20, 2PM-3:30PM (MDT)
Hilton Lobby (Gathering for Coffee)
Session #1 - Friday, November 20, 4PM-5:30PM (MDT)
Feminist Liberation Theologians Network;
joining with WATER (Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual)
Denver Downtown Redstone 3rd Floor
Session #2 - Sunday, November 22, 9AM- 11:AM PM (MDT)
Feminist Theologies: The Basics
Women's Caucus of the AAR-SBL Business Meeting to Follow
Hyatt Regency Denver Centennial B - 3rd Floor
Session #3 - Monday, November 23, 3PM-4:00PM (MDT)
Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit Collaboration
From Minority to Minor: Genealogy, Postidentity, and Becoming in Religion
(CARV Business meeting to follow)
Colorado Convention Center (706) Street Level
Session #4 - Tuesday November 24, 8:30AM-10:00AM (MDT)
Women & Religion Unit Collaboration
Recasting Futures: Gender, Authority, and Theological Imagination
Colorado Convention Center (406) Street Level
Friday Nov 20, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Women's Caucus Gathering at Hilton Lobby
Come to network and enjoy the camaraderie of the Women's Caucus. Learn about the caucus and join us for a meet and greet to kick off the Conference. We engage the 2026 AAR conference theme, "Future(s)” from the perspective of those researching on gender and religion. Join in this exciting conversation as we share ideas on how we might advance the public engagement of this topic through our research, in our institutions, and beyond. As part of the program, we would like to give a warm welcome to international scholars and encourage them to attend our gathering. There will be a short tour of the area offered as well.
All Are Welcome!
Facilitators:
Deborah Fulthorp, Grand Canyon University; Women’s Caucus Co-Chair
Ulrike Ernst-Auga, Humboldt University of Berlin
Janice Poss, Claremont Graduate University
Joshua Turpin, Brite Divinity School
Friday Nov 20, 4-5:30pm
Feminist Liberation Theologians Network Gathering
The Feminist Liberation Theologians’ Network (FLTN) is a project of WATER, encompassing colleagues from all over the world. It emerged from the necessity to link U.S. and Canadian feminist scholars, ministers, and activists in ways that would go beyond denomination, tradition, academic affiliation, and/or racial/ethnic boundaries.
The FLTN is made up of people who affirm each other as engaged in feminist liberation theological work, whether academic or activist or both. The group engages in conversation and common work, and interfaces with similar groups around the world. The FLTN meets at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion for discussion and networking.
Please register here! https://www.waterwomensalliance.org/feminist-liberation-theologians-network-2/
Facilitators:
Mary E. Hunt, WATER Women's Alliance, Cofounder, Codirector
Diann L. Neu, WATER Women's Alliance, Cofounder, Codirector
Sunday Nov. 22, 9:00am-11:00am
Feminist Theologies: The Basics
& Women's Caucus Business Meeting
Hyatt Regency Denver, Centennial B
For most of Christian history, theology has been written primarily by men and for men. Beginning in the early 1960s, feminists identified ways traditional theologies omitted, ignored, and vilified women’s experiences, issues, and perspectives. In the past 60 years, feminists have developed a vibrant theological tradition that is essential for a full understanding of Christian theologies. Feminist theologies engage some of the most important and controversial issues of our time, from the roles of women in society to sexuality, abortion, gender identity, and the environment. Feminist Theologies: The Basics co written by Susan Shaw and Grace Ji-Sun Kim offers new insights on how women do theology.
This panel will begin a discussion on Feminist Theologies: The Basics and examine feminist theological methodologies, new emerging feminist voices, the concept of intersectionality, and themes in theology, gender, and sexuality.
Business Meeting to Follow:
Come and Join us and be part of our leadership team! We also spend this time planning sessions for the Online and in person AAR-SBL Conferences in 2027!
All are Welcome!
Panelist:
Kathryn Common
Kate Ott
Deborah Fulthorp
Mo'nica Rey
Respondent
Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Earlham School of Religion
Business Meeting
Joshua Turpin
Deborah Fulthorp
Monday
Nov 23, 3-4:30pm
Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit Women's Caucus Collaboration
Colorado Convention Center 2027
In response to the 2026 presidential theme FUTURE/S, this session explores how religion shapes and transforms conditions of violence beyond identity-centered frameworks. Rather than approaching religion primarily through the category of “minority,” the panel advances relational, material, and postidentity perspectives that foreground processes of becoming, worldmaking, and critique. The papers examine how violence is produced, contested, and reconfigured across diverse contexts. Contributions include an analysis of Indigenous-led repatriation practices that reframe museum collections as kin and articulate a non-punitive critique of colonial violence; a study of climate adaptation workshops in the Rocky Mountains that mobilize religious narratives to mitigate conflict over increasingly scarce water resources; and a global history of coffee that traces Islamic and postcolonial networks of solidarity and alternative social imaginaries. These case studies are grounded by a conceptual intervention that develops “minor religion” as a critical analytic for rethinking religion beyond regimes of recognition, governance, and fixed identity. Together, the panel reframes religion as a dynamic field of relations through which violence is both reproduced and transformed, highlighting how alternative epistemologies and practices open pathways toward more just and sustainable futures.
Papers
Ulrike E. Auga, Humboldt University of Berlin.
From Minority to Minor: Genealogy, Postidentity, and Becoming in Religion
Miriam Hamburger, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Religion, Rhetoric, Kinship: Repatriation as a Critique of Violence
Mary Keller, University of Wyoming
Reducing the Risks of Future Violence Over Sacred Waters: Religion and Climate Adaptation Planning at the Interface of Indigenous and Rural Settler Communities
Flagg Miller
The Afterlives of Yemeni Coffee in South Africa: Religion and Climate Adaptation Planning at the Interface of Indigenous and Rural Settler Communities
CARV Business Meeting
Flagg Miller
Ulrike Ernst-Auga, Humboldt University of Berlin
Debbie Fulthorp,
Comfort Max-Wirth
Ruth Amwe
Telesia Musili
Jenny Davila-Holloway
Tuesday
Nov 24, 8:30AM - 10:00 AM
Women & Religion Unit/Women's Caucus Collaboration
Recasting Futures: Gender, Authority, and Theological Imagination
Colorado Convention Center, 406 (Street Level)
In collaboration with the AAR/SBL Women's Caucus, this panel asks what kinds of religious futures become possible when women’s voices, bodies, and experiences are taken as central to theological reflection. The papers from emerging scholars examine how gendered systems—shaped by patriarchy, colonial legacies, and institutional norms—have regulated authority and silenced participation across diverse contexts, from Malagasy ritual discourse to Catholic sacramental theology and Christian diaconal practice. Rather than treating these structures as fixed, each contribution identifies sites of disruption and reimagining. By centering women’s lived and embodied knowledge, the panel explores how ritual, sacrament, and ministry can be reinterpreted as spaces of both critique and reconstruction. These interventions do not merely recover marginalized voices; they actively recast theological discourse toward futures marked by accountability, mutuality, and expanded forms of participation.
Papers
Eve Schwartz
A Hidden People: Young Women Victims/Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church and Eucharistic Implications.
Rojo Hanitriniala RANDRIANARIMANANA
The Architecture of Silence: Gendered Ritual Authority and the Futures of Women’s Agency in Madagascar
Marcie Gibson
The Personal is Political is Pastoral is Prophetic: The Coupling and Uncoupling of Gender and Diakonia, Historical Wisdom for the Future
Sarah Neff, Duke University
“The Boke is Not Yet Performed”: Reading for Textual Performance in Julian of Norwich’s Long Text
Deborah Fulthorp Co-Presiding
Telesia Musili, Co-Presiding