2018 Association of Practical Theology Biennial Review
In April 2018, students from the Advanced Research Seminar for Practical Theology, along with Professor Claire Wolfteich, attended the 2018 Association of Practical Theology Biennial at Yale Divinity School. Several doctoral students presented papers, and we are excited to share the following reflection on the weekend from from doctoral student Jasmin Figueroa.
2018 Association of Practical Theology Biennial Review
by Jasmin Figueroa
In April, my classmates in BU-STH’s Advanced Research Seminar for Practical Theology, our professor, Dr. Wolfteich, and I travelled to the Association of Practical Theology Biennial conference at Yale Divinity School. While we had been looking forward to it since the beginning of the semester, several of us were also anticipating presenting papers at the conference. The theme was “Making Justice: Practical Theology, The Arts, And Transformation” and as a result, all of the sessions were devoted to this topic in different ways.
The pre-conference workshop “Embodied Pedagogy for Practical Theologians” brought in facilitators connected with an organization called Theatre of the Oppressed. Over the course of two days, we (students, professors, and guests) engaged in a series of improvised exercises and team-building activities to explore power dynamics that we could bring back with us and use in the classroom. The actual conference began with a question and answer session with Indigo Girls artist Emily Saliers and her father, practical theologian Don Saliers. The Saliers shared stories about their respective theological evolutions and how each has used music to explore theological and social themes. They also treated us to a set of songs from one another’s repertoires. Other workshops included examinations of poetry in spiritual direction and as a pedagogical tool; worship music and liturgy as elements of resistance; and visual art as tools of resistance and decolonization.
First year PhD student Hyunwoo Koo gave a presentation called “‘The Little Girl’ in Manhattan: How This Statue Honoring Comfort Women Cries with Postcolonial Koreans in America,” during which he talked about the history behind “The Little Girl” statues that have been posted in major cities as a visual reminder of the generation of Korean girls and women who were forced into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. In her paper, “Theopoetics from the Pulpit: Spoken Word as Prophetic Utterance,” first year PhD student Amy McLaughlin-Sheasby presented a case study that examined how spoken word poetry can be used in the pulpit to wrestle with controversial topics, arguing for using theopoetics an an interpretive tool.
Finally, I presented a paper, “Reclaiming Authority: Art as the Spiritual Practice of Resistance in the Age of Trump.” In this presentation, I argued that we in the field should recognize the presence and contributions of millennials from marginalized communities who are providing authoritative, pastoral responses to the traumas of this present political moment through various creative projects.