We are excited to share information on two upcoming ISSRNC panels that have been organized as part of the American Academy of Religion programs this summer and fall. Please see below for details on each.

June 2026 (AAR Online Program)

Different Historical Arrangements of Emotional Energy: Spatial Epistemologies and their Critique of “Crisis Epistemologies”

This roundtable explores “different historical arrangements of emotional energy” as a framework for rethinking religion, ecology, and politics beyond Eurocentric, time-centered epistemologies. Building on Vine Deloria Jr.’s critique of Western historical consciousness and his emphasis on spatial epistemologies, participants will examine how place-based ways of knowing foreground moral relationships, ecological responsibilities, and non-linear temporalities. The session responds to contemporary “crisis epistemologies”—including nationalist and reactionary movements that mobilize mythic pasts—by interrogating how competing configurations of emotional energy shape collective identities and political imaginaries. Bringing together papers, case studies, and community-engaged work, the roundtable highlights decolonial approaches to religion and environment, including Indigenous knowledge systems, climate adaptation, and movements for land, food, and data sovereignty. Participants will collaboratively explore how spatialized practices and concepts—such as differential consciousness, kinship, and mutual responsibility—can foster new forms of planetary coexistence, offering alternatives to homogenizing global narratives and opening pathways toward more just and ecologically grounded futures.

November 2026

The Planetary Costs of Nationalism

This roundtable examines the environmental and social costs of nationalism by foregrounding the material consequences of “imagined” political boundaries. Building on Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, it argues that national borders generate significant ecological harm through three interrelated processes: militarized border enforcement, colonial and postcolonial terraforming, and warfare. These practices produce large, often unaccounted-for carbon footprints, while also enabling the destruction and reconfiguration of ecosystems and cultures—what can be understood as forms of omnicide. The paper situates nationalism within broader histories of extractive capitalism and environmental transformation, emphasizing how geopolitical divisions intensify planetary crises. In response, it proposes a reorientation toward “planetary politics,” drawing on frameworks such as terrapolitanism, earth democracy, and cosmopolitanism from below. Such approaches envision nations as localized caretakers within a shared biosphere, advocating for governance and ethical orientations that prioritize ecological repair, historical accountability, and more-than-
human interdependence.

Adaptive Scholarship and the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture: Reflections on the State of the Field

Co-Sponsored with the Religion and Ecology Unit

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the inception of the Religion and Ecology unit at the AAR, and the 20th year anniversary of the ISSRNC. With these fortuitous convergences, and with the 2026 AAR presidential theme being “future/s” we could not think of a better way to mark this moment than to convene a roundtable that initiates a field-level conversation about the state of where Religion and Ecology is today. 

The roundtable proposes a collective reflection on how the study of religion and ecology is adapting and what that adaptation requires by posing a generative question: What kinds of scholars and scholarship are needed now? This question arises from a specific set of pressures. The field has matured alongside ecological disruption, decolonial critique, and the fragmentation of disciplinary homes in religious studies. It has diversified its methods —absorbing community-engaged, place-based, and land-based frameworks—even as the institutional conditions that sustain research programs have grown more precarious. New forms of interdisciplinarity have opened the field’s borders in productive ways, but have also raised questions about what anchors it. Expanding expectations around public engagement have transformed what counts as legitimate scholarly work without always clarifying what such work requires of researchers and institutions.

The panel proposes a collective reflection on where we have been while looking ahead to the future. In our current moment, as it is both similar to, and very different from the moment of its gestation, what kinds of scholars and scholarship is needed now?

** Scheduling and location information will be updated when available.