Plenary Speakers
University of Pittsburgh
Mark Paterson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He has an interest in the history and science of bodily sensation, and technologies of the senses. He is author of books including The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Routledge, 2007), Seeing with the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch After Descartes (Edinburgh UP, 2016), How We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and most recently Affective Touching: Neurobiology and Technological Applications (Cambridge UP ‘Element’, 2025). He is on the Editorial Board of the journals The Senses and Society (since 2008) and Multimodality & Society (since 2021).
California Institute of Integral Studies
Jacob Sherman is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Chair of the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS. He teaches, as well, in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program at CIIS. Professor Sherman received his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from the University of Cambridge. He taught previously at King’s College London and from 2014 – 17 held a visiting appointment as University Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. By training a philosopher, theologian, and religious studies scholar, he is the author of Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy, and editor, with Jorge Ferrer, of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. The author of over two dozen peer-review articles, essays, and chapters, his writings have appeared in publications such as The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Modern Theology, the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, and Theology and Science. He is an elected Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, serves on the steering committee for the Contemplative Studies Unity at the American Academy of Religion, and is the Owen Barfield Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies.
Reed College
Johanna Winant is Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College. She is the co-editor of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton 2025) and the author of Lyric Logic: How Modern American Poetry Reasons (Columbia 2026). In addition to these books, she has published a number of scholarly essays on modern literature in journals and in edited collections and handbooks. Johanna is a co-editor of the book series Re/Verse at Amherst College Press, and she also writes essays for the public at magazines including Boston Review and Slate.
BYU Faculty Participants