This talk uses the June 5, 1982 meeting between the boxer Muhammad Ali and Pope John Paul II at the Vatican as a jumping off point for thinking about two iconic global religious figures of the postwar era. How do both men bring theological understanding to the world?

M. Cooper Harriss will speak on “GOAT Meets Pope: Muhammad Ali and John Paul II in the World.” He is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, in Bloomington, where he teaches courses on American religion, literature, and culture. The author of “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press 2017), his writing has appeared (or shall appear) in The Journal of Religion, Biblical Interpretation, Literature and Theology, Journal of Africana Studies, and Soundings — and online in The Immanent Frame and Sightings. His book in progress, “Muhammad Ali and the Irony of American Religion,” considers the boxer as a signal figure of postwar American religion.