About the Event
Hosted by the Publicly Engaged Scholarship and the Study of Religion Seminar
Drawing from current work, our webinAAR features a range of panelists who will explore what the future of teaching and learning looks like when it comes to religion and prison. We will hear from religious studies educators who have taught in several different prison-based teaching programs and at various stages in their academic careers. We will also consider outside teaching and learning perspectives, particularly when it comes to audiences outside of currently incarcerated students, including formerly incarcerated students, traditional university students, and public audiences. Finally, we will consider teaching and learning work that occurs in abolitionist circles. Collectively, we hope to advance conversations within AAR and our wider communities about religious studies, incarceration, and education.
Event Guidelines
Please note: AAR membership is not required to register for this event. In order to register, you will need to login or create an account if you don’t already have one. Creating an account is free, quick and easy and enables us to let you know about related upcoming events.
For assistance, please view our video walkthrough. You can adjust the playback speed on the video next to the closed caption icon. If you still have questions, please contact us.
Panelists
Jason Sexton is the director of the Center for Faith, Flourishing, and the Environment California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. Jason is a social theorist who studies internal structural commitments of communities and their members and how these relate to assumed cultural and theological norms that show up in social and ethical action. His research focuses closely on California and its culture, the prison and its governance structures, contemporary religion/theology, and on convergent points where these subjects intersect.
Leela Prasad is St. Purandar Das Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University and served as the President of the American Academy of Religion in 2025. She served on Duke University’s faculty from 1999 to 2024, and her primary interests are the anthropology of ethics, with a focus on South Asia, gender, narrative, colonialism & decoloniality, prison-and post-prison life, and Gandhi. Her work is at the intersections of religious studies, anthropology, history and literature.
Sam Houston serves as chair of the department of religious studies at Stetson University. He earned his doctoral degree from Florida State University, specializing in Muslim ethics and comparative religious ethics. He lived for two years in Abu Dhabi, UAE, teaching English at Zayed University and traveling throughout the Middle East/North Africa region. His current work focuses on the intersections of Sufism, Islamic activism, and virtue ethics. His interests also include comparative models of ethical formation in faith-based activism/community organizing.
Moderator
Victoria Machado is an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida where she teaches Nature Spirituality and Environmental Crisis in its Cultural Context. She holds a PhD in religious studies with a dual specialization in Religion in the Americas and Religion & Nature from the University of Florida. Victoria’s research focuses on the environmental humanities and spiritual dimensions of Florida’s water.
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