Nearly 7,000 scholars, authors, professors, and publishers from around the world will be heading to San Diego from November 23 to 26 for the 2024 annual meeting hosted jointly by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The meeting will feature more than 900 sessions at the San Diego Convention Center and nearby hotels, two plenary addresses, and a book exhibit hall featuring what the event’s planners are calling “one of the world’s largest collections of books and digital resources.”
The doorstop-thick conference agenda promises groundbreaking research in the study of religion, philosophy, theology, the Bible, and other sacred works; revelatory analysis of ancient texts; fresh perspectives on powerful events and towering historical figures; and deep discussions of contemporary concerns from technology to climate and the challenges of finding a job.
There will be author-meets-critics sessions where scholars who have written on topics as diverse as Black divinities in Haiti and contemporary Christian music will face panels digging in to their research.
Dozens of emerging scholars will be presenting papers. “We’re playing a lot more attention to them, given that they are entering into a profession that is a lot more precarious than it used to be,” says Steed Vernyl Davidson, executive director of the SBL, noting that 10 religiously affiliated colleges have closed in the past year alone. There are special sessions to nurture young professionals by helping them find potential publishers and employers so, as Davidson says, “they can get a long and fruitful career.”
Davidson says he’s looking forward to sessions about still-evolving ideas, such as ones examining new theories of how to understand the Bible. He is curious what questions might arise. “Is there a move from the 19th-century methodology?” he asks. “What questions are modern readers asking? How is biblical and religious knowledge relevant to them?”
AAR president Jin Y. Park, a Buddhist scholar and chair of the philosophy department at American University, chose the theme for the 2024 meeting and two plenary addresses. Park says she turned to a subject she considers the most urgent topic today: “violence and nonviolence in a world where some humans and nonhumans are treated as objects without innate value and dignity.” Panelists will explore aspects of this theme in nearly 50 of the 900 sessions planned for the conference.
“This is, of course, a fitting topic for religion scholars, and the role of all these sessions and meetings is to share scholarship and to inspire future scholarship,” Park says. “If you really think about religious studies and all the fields it connects with, it has an impact on almost every aspect of our lives.”
