Biography
Laurel C. Schneider’s early career in peace research helped to sharpen her lifelong interest in religion and culture, which led to her M.Div. from Harvard and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt. She taught at Colby and North Central Colleges, Chicago Theological Seminary and is now in the Religious Studies (chair), Gender & Sexuality, and the Graduate Departments of Religion at Vanderbilt.
An active member of the AAR since 1995, Laurel served on the first AAR Committee on the Status of LGBTIQ Persons, helping to draft the academy’s policy on diversity in the profession. She has served in the elected position of Secretary to the Board of Directors and member of the Executive Committee of the AAR since 2021. She is the author of Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity (2007), Re-Imagining the Divine: Confronting the Backlash Against Feminist Theology (1999), co-editor of Polydoxy: Theologies of Multiplicity and Relation (2010), co-author of Awake To the Moment: An Introduction to Theology (2016) and co-author of Queer Soul and Queer Theology: Ethics and Redemption in Real Life (2021). She has numerous articles and anthology chapters relating to concepts of multiplicity, divinity, sexuality, race, and postcolonial theory and is currently at work on poetics and incarnation.
Candidate Statement
These pandemic years, rife with political attacks on our institutions of critical learning, make our collective work vital to the health and diversity of the humanities. I am honored by this nomination and am in the happy position of knowing that, if I am not elected, the post will be filled by a superlatively qualified candidate with a long history of inspired service to the field. However, if elected I am committed to serve out of deep concern for the future of critical studies in religion and my appreciation for the many and varied members of the AAR, who are the society.
My professional life has been constituted by multiple criss-crossings of scholarly relations that form the basis and structure of this membership-fueled learned society. My early exposure to the luminaries in my field and my ongoing engagement with the great diversity of voices, approaches, and intellectual experiments played out at the annual meetings on panels, in hallways, and overcrowded hotel rooms still shape my own voice and commitments in ways that cannot be fully unraveled or parsed. As a junior faculty member in small institutions I was often completely alone: the only woman in the department, the only lesbian on the faculty, the lowest-paid member of the faculty, and so on. It was members of the AAR who gave time and guidance through those years. It is still members who advocate for themselves and others, who reach back to pull forward, who mentor by example and who address the issues that affect educational endeavors, especially where the study of religion is misunderstood or dismissed. It is members who are charting new professional pathways for scholars of religion, serving as models and avatars of imagination and entrepreneurship. The study of religion in educational institutions is often precarious, especially for contingent and other non-tenured faculty and the AAR is an important networking body, enabling connections without which our losses would be great.
As Secretary to the Board I developed a more intimate understanding of the current pressures and needs that face a volunteer-led organization with a tiny, but excellent staff. Our shared futuring work over the next few years will be critical for the long-term survival of the AAR, as financial pressures mount and resources in the humanities continue to diminish. We face tough decisions about sustainable and affordable formats for the Annual Meeting and outreach options. We must together imagine a way forward that continues the vital mission of the organization for the disciplines it houses in a world that is fundamentally altered by the economics, politics, medical realities, social inequities and institutional shifts that are already affecting every level of academic life. As a member of the presidential line, my goal will be to assist our colleagues on the Board and our new Executive Director in our collective work to keep the vibrant diversity of AAR scholarship in all its changing professional forms front and center. I look forward to the opportunity to serve in this way.