| IMPORTANT MEMBER UPDATES
Information about the 2012 Call for Papers and the 2012 AAR Annual Meeting is included in this issue – please read carefully!
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ANNUAL MEETING NEWS
2012 Annual Meeting Registration and Housing Opens Today!
Registration and Housing for the 2012 Annual Meetings Chicago hosted by the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature opens Monday, February 13 at 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time!
Here are some of the exciting events on the AAR program at the 2012 Annual Meetings, November 17-20:
Plenary Series from Otto Maduro, 2012 AAR President on the theme Migrants' Religions under Imperial Duress, featuring plenary speakers: Ivone Gebara, Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians; Harvey Cox, Harvard University; Manuel Vasquez, University of Florida; and Carolyn Chen, Northwestern University
Workshops, including: "The Study of Religion as an Analytical Discipline"; "More Time, Less Budget: The Role of the Department Chair in a New Economic Context"; "Feeling Political: Religion, Media, and the Politics of Emotion"; "Performance and Practice in Muslim Experience"; and "Global Perspectives on (In)equity and Ethics in Ecological Issues"
Tours: Chicago City and Architectural Tour; Passport to Chicago's Neighborhoods; Chicago's Gangster Untouchable Tour; Baha'i House of Worship; Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center; Sacred and Religious Sites of Chicago
The opportunity to see over 10,000 of your colleagues in beautiful Chicago, Illinois! See you in Chicago! |
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2012 CALL FOR PAPERS
We would like to update you on the status of our online proposal submission system for the 2012 Chicago Annual Meeting.
Over the past six months, we've been working steadily with a software development firm on improving our online systems. Though that work is rapidly reaching completion, it will delay the launch of the proposal submission system to the end of the month. We apologize for the delay, but feel it essential for providing you the best system possible.
Unfortunately, this means we need to shorten the time window for submitting proposals to about two weeks, because of other program planning activities that subsequently need to occur to publish the online Program Book in a timely manner.
With that in mind, we encourage you to go ahead and begin preparing your Annual Meeting proposals offline—identifying the Program Units you'd like to submit your proposals to and the presenters involved, and drafting your proposal descriptions (max 1500 words) and abstracts (max 150 words). That way, you'll be prepared to copy and paste that information once the system is ready. For further information on preparing your proposal, please see the Call for Papers.
Our staff is working in overdrive on this to provide you the proposal submission system as soon as possible. We are happy to respond to any questions or comments you have, and will certainly keep you posted.
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CALL FOR RELIGION, CULTURE, AND HISTORY BOOK SERIES EDITOR
The AAR Publications Committee seeks a book editor for the Religion, Culture, and History Series, which is sponsored by the American Academy of Religion and published in cooperation with Oxford University Press. The Religion, Culture, and History Series publishes scholarly work that addresses the complex interrelationship between religious studies and cultural studies. The Series is thus open to a range of methodological approaches: historical, comparative, theological, and philosophical. By emphasizing the religious dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of religion, the Series promotes a widening and deepening of the study of "popular" culture and cultural theory, and attempts to decenter our academic discourse about religion by focusing on its particular embeddedness in a wide range of cultural phenomenon.
AAR Series Editors help set editorial policy, acquire manuscripts, and work with Oxford University Press in seeing manuscripts through to publication. Editors sit on the AAR Publications Committee for the duration of their term. This is a volunteer position. All applicants must be members of the American Academy of Religion.
If you are interested in this position, you are highly encouraged to read further information about the position in the upcoming RSN March 2012 issue. Please e-mail inquiries, nominations (self-nominations are encouraged), and applications (a letter describing interests and qualifications, plus a current curriculum vita) by Word or PDF attachment to Kim Connor, Publications Committee Chair, connork@usfca.edu. The application deadline is June 1, 2012.
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INTRODUCING AAR MEMBER SPOTLIGHT!
The Member Spotlight is a series of interviews with AAR members who have shaped the field of religious studies. AAR is pleased to interview Charles S. Prebish, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State University (1971-2006) and Charles Redd Chair in Religious Studies Emeritus at Utah State University (2007-2010). Prebish is an important figure within Buddhist Studies, especially in the establishment of the disciplines of American and Western Buddhist Studies. Read Prebish's reflections on his career, the future of Buddhist Studies, and what he is working on next! |
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS
Have you considered applying for a 2012-2013 Regional Development Grant? Regional Development Grants provide funds for special projects within the regions that promise to benefit the scholarly and professional life of AAR members and do the work of the AAR in the regions. Workshops, special programs, training events, and other innovative regional projects may be funded through this source. Where possible, projects are designed so that they may be duplicated or transported to other regions.
Applications should include a narrative description of the project detailing how the project promises to benefit the scholarly and professional life of AAR members and the work of the region. Please include comments on how these projects or activities may be adapted to other regional groups. The application should state the time period covered by the project and provide a detailed budget (office expenses, travel expenses, honoraria, stipend, and other expenses). Institutional overhead costs should not be included in this budget. No grant will exceed $4,000.
Successful grants from prior years can be found here. Application deadline is August 1. |
ACADEMIC ABBY: Professional Advice from Your Colleagues
Do you have a question about life in academe that you are at a loss to answer by yourself but don't feel you can approach your colleagues with it? Ask Academic Abby! Academic Abby is able to answer questions large and small, from dealing with faculty dilemmas, to tenure issues, to work/life balance troubles. Questions can be submitted anonymously through an online form. Members of the AAR Status of Women in the Profession Committee will respond to each question received. The question and answer will be posted on the Status of Women in the Profession web page and issues of Religious Studies News. |
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OTHER NEWS
Attention Community College Faculty! The Newberry Library invites applications from teams of faculty members with sponsoring administrators from community colleges to participate in "Out of Many: Religious Pluralism in America," an NEH Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges program that focuses on collaborative research for curriculum development. Participating faculty will conduct research in the Newberry's collections and partake in discussions with prominent scholars to gain a better understating of key moments in America's past when the nation's ideal of religious freedom was challenged. The application deadline is March 23.
ALCS Public Fellows Grants
Solicitation for the second ACLS Public Fellows program is underway. The program was launched last spring to demonstrate the value of employing skilled and accomplished young scholars in a variety of capacities, thereby broadening the academy's conventional ideas of the PhD career path. The deadline for applications is March 21.
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AAR MEMBER NOTES
Books and Major Publications
Febe Armanios, Middlebury College
Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2011 (ISBN 019974484X).
Joseph Cheah, Saint Joseph College
Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-975628-5
Jean Ehret, Sacred Heart University (CT), and Erwin Mode (eds.),
The Challenge of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Making a Difference in Contemporary Academic Settings, Muenster, Lit Verlag, "Glaube und Ethos," vol. 10, 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-90070-8.
Lynne Gerber, University of California, Berkeley
Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America. University of Chicago Press. January 2012, ISBN 9780226288116
Michael Jerryson, Eckerd College
Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. New York: Oxford University Press, July 2011. ISBN: 978-0199793242.
Robert N. McCauley, Emory University
Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. New York: Oxford University Press, November 2011. ISBN 978-0-19-982726-8
Cleo McNelly Kearns, New York University
Virgin Mary, Monotheism and Sacrifice. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ Pr, 2008. ISBN: 9780521871563 ATLA0001739021
A. Whitney Sanford, University of Florida
Growing Stories from India: Religion and the Fate of Agriculture. University Press of Kentucky, 2011. Hardback ISBN: 9780813134123; ebook ISBN: 9780813134130
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Concordia University
Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Laura A. Stivers, Dominican University of California
Disrupting Homelessness: Alternative Christian Approaches. Fortress Press, April 2011. ISBN 0800697979 Christian Ethics: A Case Method Approach, Fourth Edition, by Laura Stivers, Jim Martin-Schramm, and Christine Gudorf. Orbis Books, February 2012. ISBN 1570759669
Luis Santamaria del Rio, Red Iberoamericana de Estudio de las Sectas (RIES), and David Santamaria
Los otros creyentes. El hecho religioso no catolico en la provincia de Zamora (The other believers. The non-Catholic religious fact in the province of Zamora) Semuret. Zamora (Spain) 2011. 278 pages. ISBN: 978-84-88954-98-5
Career Transitions
James Clement van Pelt, Yale University
Program Coordinator, Yale Initiative in Religion, Science & Technology Yale Divinity School.
Let your AAR colleagues know about your professional milestones!Submit your Member Note online.
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