We are thrilled to announce the Keynote Address of our 2025 conference will be delivered by Slavica Jakelić, the Richard P. Baepler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Valparaiso University. Join us as Dr. Jakelić shares her reflections on the topic Beyond the Impasse in the Study of Religion and Nationalism? What Religious Studies Can Offer and Why That Matters. Our Keynote Address will begin on Friday April 4 at 5 PM in the St. Lawrence University Inn. Learn more about Dr. Jakelić and her presentation below!
Beyond the Impasse in the Study of Religion and Nationalism? What Religious Studies Can Offer and Why That Matters
ABSTRACT: When describing the links between religions and nationalisms in contemporary societies, scholars from all types of disciplines analyze these configurations to identify religions as being used and instrumentalized, hijacked and mobilized, secularized and politicized. What kind of understanding of “religion” emerges in these evaluations? Do we, as religious studies scholars, sufficiently draw on the rich resources of our self-reflective field in order to nuance the analytic tools for the study of religio-national phenomenology? And if the study of religions is constitutive of the history of religions, what does that imply in terms of responsibility of religious studies for how religio-national problematic ought to be addressed not just analytically, but normatively and politically as well?
BIO: Slavica Jakelić teaches at Valparaiso University’s Honors College. Her scholarly interests and publications center on religion and nationalism, religious and secular humanisms, theories of religion and secularism, theories of modernity, and interreligious conflict and dialogue. Jakelić has worked at or was a fellow of a number of interdisciplinary institutes in Europe and the United States: Erasmus Institute for the Culture of Democracy (Zagreb, Croatia), Institute for the Study of Economic Culture (Boston University), Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna, Austria), Institute for the Advanced Study in Culture (University of Virginia), Martin Marty Center (University of Chicago), Erasmus Institute (University of Notre Dame), The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies (University of Notre Dame), Kroc Institute (University of Notre Dame), and Yale Divinity School (Yale University). She was a Senior Fellow of the national project “Religion & Its Publics,” placed at the University of Virginia, where she was a faculty member and co-director at the UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture for several years. She was also a Senior Fellow of the international project "Orthodoxy and Human Rights," placed at Fordham University.
Jakelić's writings have appeared in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Religious Ethics, Political Theology, The Hedgehog Review, The Review of Faith &International Affairs, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, and Commonweal. She edited or co-edited four volumes: The Future of the Study of Religion, Crossing Boundaries: From Syria to Slovakia, The Hedgehog Review’s issue "After Secularization," and the special issue of Religions “Nationalisms and Religious Identities.” Jakelić is the author of Collectivistic Religions (2010/2016), Both Freedom and Belonging: Essays on Religion, Nationalism, and Solidarity (in Croatian, 2024) and Pluralizing Humanism (2025). She is currently working on a book titled Ethical Nationalisms.