Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Since visiting with missmurchison while attending a local Science Fiction convention with Tanya Huff as the guest of honor will be much more fun (as well as a great deal more affordable) than going to Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 1-4, I'm happily making my arrangements for a trip to Iowa, instead (to return home in plenty of time to vote for Obama, of course, on Nov. 4th).

However, for anyone else who might be planning to attend the AAR meeting in Chicago -- or who simply might be curious about some of the more fhan-relevant papers being presented this year -- here are some of the highlights I noted in the online program book:

( Some AAR papers and panels related to comics, movies, anime, HP, and MMORPG's )



Not as riveting as some of the topics I've seen other years (and unfortunately, I forgot to make note of the panel which included a paper titled, The Next Generation of Intimate Ministries: The Online Business of Evangelical Sex Toys, on the theological and sociological significance of the growing online market for Evangelical Christian 'marital aids' -- which has no fannish relevance, per se, but just struck me as slightly freaky in an intriguing way), and certainly not enough to make me regret for one minute that I won't be able to attend, but still . . . . It's vaguely comforting (to me, at least) to know that these topics ARE being discussed in Academia!