Recent and Upcoming Conference Presentations and Public Talks

“Verbal Abuse as a Means to the Batin Amongst the ‘Knowers of God’: The Function of Cursing in the Manaqeb al-Arifin of Shams al-din Aflaki”

My presentation examines the role of verbal abuse in one of the key hagiographies of the early Mevlevi tradition. It relates cursing and other forms of verbal ‘transgression’ to the batin/zahir discourse on meaning within the madhab-e ishq tradition of Sufi Islam.

Date: September 4, 2024.

Presentation: “Collective Conscious Capitalism: Phish, The Waterwheel Foundation, and the Ethical Expiation of Hedonistic Expenditure”

As part of my continuing explorations of religion and (counter)cultures, I here examine the relationship between the touring jamband Phish’s concert experiences, conscious capitalism and its contradictions, and the way that the Waterwheel Foundation and other charitable endeavors navigate the big boat that Phish and their scene sail upon. In the process, questions of ethics, hedonism, and their intersection with collective experience and capitalism will be explored. The paper is in conversation with scholarship from economics on the emerging movement of conscious capitalism and ethical consumption, and critiques of the same by Slavoj Žižek, Kathryn Lofton, and others.

Date: May 19, 2024.

For a full list of my public lectures and conference presentations, see my CV.