The Emerson Society is sponsoring a panel titled "Emerson & Varieties of Religious Experience" at the American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2024.

Emerson read and thought broadly across religious texts and traditions. He studied the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the Analects of Confucius, St. Augustine’s Confessions, and the works of Emanuel Swedenborg. He read the Quakers, the Stoics, and the Mystics, and he drew inspiration from individuals as diverse as Mary Moody Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Sampson Reed, Friedrich Schelling, and Germaine de Staël. This panel invites papers on Emerson and varieties of religious experience from the nineteenth-century until now. Topics might include, but are not limited to, texts and traditions that influenced Emerson’s religious thought; Emerson’s influence on later religious thinkers; the scholarly reception of Emerson’s religion; connections between religious experience and aesthetics; and the role of religion in social justice movements.

Please send a title and an approximately 250-word abstract to thomas.howard@wustl.edu by January 12, 2024.