The AAR schedule has been finalized, and Arihanta Institute’s faculty are looking forward to another impactful year with manifold contributions of research and publications across a number of academic fields at the AAR’s 2025 Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

 

Arihanta Institute’s faculty will be presenting research across a broad range of disciplinary units including the Animals and Religion Unit, Contemplative Studies Unit, Music and Religion Unit, Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit, Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit, as well as the adjacent Dharma Academy of North America’s (DANAM) annual conference.

 

For the in-person November 2025 meeting, Professor Christopher Jain Miller, co-chair of the steering committee of the Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit, will be presenting two papers as well as presiding over a panel organized for DANAM within the framework of the Compassion Studies Initiative. Professor Miller has also organized a book review panel for the AAR’s June 2025 Summer Online sessions.

 

Professor Miller’s first paper will contribute to a panel organized by Alba Rodriguez Juan (UC Riverside) titled, “Contours of Freedom: Contemplative Practices in Jain Thought and Literature.”  The title of Professor Miller’s paper, which was conceived within Arihanta Institute’s Center for the Study of Jain Yoga, is: “Arhum ‘Jain’ Yoga: Acharya Sushil Kumar's Assemblage of Pan-South Asian Contemplative Practices in Song of the Soul.”

 

Professor Miller’s second paper, “Puruṣa bound from within / without looking on’: Gurani Anjali’s Sāṃkhya-Yoga Music on Long Island, New York,” is based upon a book chapter he wrote for Brita Heimarck’s Yogic Traditions and Sacred Sound Practices in the United States (SUNY Forthcoming 2025). Heimarck organized a book review panel for the Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit titled “Yogic Traditions and Sacred Sound Practices” featuring several contributors to the volume.

 

Professor Miller also serves on DANAM’s steering committee and has co-organized with Stephanie Corigliano a panel titled “Compassion as a Path to Freedom” at DANAM’s annual conference. Professor Miller, who will preside over this panel, was awarded an Uberoi Foundation Grant for his larger project, “Compassion in Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism” which has helped to support Arihanta Institute’s Compassion Studies Initiative. Conceived within this framework, this panel at DANAM features prominent scholars in Jain, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Yoga Studies who focus on how dharmic teachings can make the world a more compassionate place.

 

At the June 2025 Summer Online AAR, Professor Miller and Professor Cogen Bohanec’s co-edited volume, Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement (SUNY Forthcoming 2025), will be reviewed on a roundtable titled “Engaged Jainism Sitting on the Lotus of Engaged Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Book Review Roundtable.” This review panel features leading scholars from the fields of Jain Studies and Engaged Buddhism who will respond to Miller and Bohanec’s groundbreaking volume, which brings together top scholars in the field of Engaged Jain Studies.

 

Professor Cogen Bohanec will himself be presenting one additional paper at the AAR as well as presiding over a panel he organized at the DANAM annual conference.

He will present a paper on Alba Rodriguez Juan’s panel, “Contours of Freedom: Contemplative Practices in Jain Thought and Literature.” The title of his paper, conceived once again within Arihanta Institute’s Center for the Study of Jain Yoga, is “A Critical Examination of Śrīmad Rājcandra’s Teachings on Contemplative Practices.”

 

In addition to this paper presentation, Professor Bohanec is also a member of DANAM’s steering committee and has organized and will chair a panel titled “The Nature of Freedom in Vaiṣṇavism and Jainism” at DANAM’s annual conference. As the author of Bhakti Ethics, Emotions, and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics (Lexington 2024), and an expert of both the Vaiṣṇava and Jain traditions, Professor Bohanec will lend his expertise to the success of the panel’s interreligious approach to understanding freedom.

 

Last but not least, Arihanta Institute’s Professor Jonathan Dickstein recently joined the steering committee for the Animals and Religion Unit at the AAR. At this year’s Annual Meeting, he will serve as both presider and respondent for a panel session he co-organized with Maharshi Vyas (UCSB). This panel, co-sponsored with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit, is titled "Disruption and Renewal: Exploring Indigenous Human-Animal Relationalities." Professor Dickstein’s work with the AAR’s Animals and Religion Unit comprises just one of the manifold activities within Arihanta Institute’s Vegan Studies Initiative.

 

As a contributing author to the aforementioned volume Engaged Jainism, Professor Dickstein will also participate on the roundtable titled “Engaged Jainism Sitting on the Lotus of Engaged Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Book Review Roundtable” as an author respondent.

 

Don’t miss all the groundbreaking research Arihanta Institute’s faculty will deliver at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion! We look forward to seeing you all in June and November!