Biography
Whitney Bauman is Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, FL. He is also co-founder and co-director of Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge, a non-profit based in Berlin, Germany that holds public discussions over social and ecological issues related to globalization and climate change. His areas of research interest fall under the theme of “religion, science, and globalization.” He is the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships and a Humboldt Fellowship, and in 2022 won an award from FIU for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities. His publications include: Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (Columbia University Press 2014), and co-authored with Kevin O’Brien, Environmental Ethics and Uncertainty: Tackling Wicked Problems (Routledge 2019); 3rd edition of Grounding Religion: A Fieldguide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, co-edited with Kevin O’Brien and Richard Bohannon, (Routledge 2023). He is also the co-editor with Karen Bray and Heather Eaton of Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking (Fordham University Press 2023). His is currently finishing his next monograph entitled, A Critical Planetary Romanticism: Literary and Scientific Origins of New Materialism (Columbia University Press).
Candidate Statement
We are all familiar with the problems that increasingly face the humanities in higher education. Within religious studies and theological studies these problems and even threats are increasingly leading to shrinking departments, program closures, and fewer majors. Since the 2008 real estate crash, the funding for religious studies and theology at universities, colleges, and seminaries has become increasingly scarce. Some of this may be due to the much talked about “demographic cliff” that we are approaching. But I would wager that much of this economic scarcity has to do with the polarization of discourses, an increase in nationalistic rhetoric, and the shutting down of spaces for dialogue and critical thinking. When I began teaching in 2008, my classes provided a space for critical and difficult conversations with students. While this hasn’t totally disappeared, many students are afraid to speak up in classes because they are afraid of the response from those who are on the other side of issues from them. If we lose these critical spaces, we lose not only freedom of speech and thought at the university level, but also one of the few remaining spaces for critical, constructive dialogue. I think religious studies and theology at colleges, seminaries and universities can play critical and constructive roles in thinking through the challenges brought about by and reactions to climate change and globalization, and the AAR can help navigate these roles within the broader humanities and academia at large.
The AAR is our professional organization and will help shape the future of what the study of religion might mean. The AAR is our organizational space to work together and figure out what the future of religion and theology within the humanities and the wider academic and public worlds might look like. The AAR is our organizational space for deciding what our professional lives might look like in academic and public worlds that are rapidly changing . Finally, the AAR is our organizational space for supporting the development and growth of emerging scholars in new and different ways as the study and significance of religion shifts. I have been involved in the AAR since I was a recently graduated MTS student at Vanderbilt Divinity School in 2000. I first served as the grad student representative to the board when I was working on my PhD at the Graduate Theological Union. I have served on the Program Committee as a member, and then again most recently as Chair of the Program Committee and Board Member. I also serve on the editorial board of the JAAR and have been co-chair of both the “religion and ecology” and “religion, science and technology” units. This organization and the work we do together are essential to the future of our fields and our professional lives. I want to join the AAR’s presidential line so that I can help work with the board and our members toward building an organization that meets the needs of the future of religious studies and theological education.