ASR News & Announcements

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Volume 40, Number 2 Winter 2006

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CONSOLIDATION AND ADVANCEMENT

The Winter issue of News and Announcements contains a slate of candidates who will in turn be called upon to give future leadership to the ASR. The names this year have been provided through the work of Past President Jay Demerath (chair), Jim Cavendish, and Omar McRoberts. Please vote! Please also follow the voting instructions so that your vote counts. Note that there is also a by-law amendment requiring action.

You are reminded of our 68th Annual Meeting in Montréal, 10-12 August, particularly in this newsletter through the book exhibit request form. We depend primarily on your responses on this form for the exhibit, and we will try to do our utmost to obtain the books you request. At the same time, you should know that not all publishers are cooperative with us in regard to the book exhibit (and this may be especially the case this year because of customs costs/hassles associated with the Canadian locale), so any word you can put in to publishers cannot hurt. We also offer publishers an opportunity to advertize in our program at very reasonable rates. If you want to make sure members at the meeting are aware of your book, encourage your publishers to avail themselves of this option. Note the deadline of 1 May on both the ballot and the request form. The Spring issue of N & A will contain the preliminary program for the meeting, hotel and travel information. Do plan on coming to the meeting. We have a large number of submissions from a wide range of colleagues.

I am happy to report that the next volume of our “Religion and the Social Order” series, On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, for which I have served as the editor, is in the works with Brill publishers, and we expect that it will be ready by our annual meeting. It features twelve chapters of current empirical research by ASR colleagues from around the world. A number of these projects and authors have had support from our Fichter grant program, so it is especially appropriate that they can be brought together in a common framework. Sales of last year’s volume, the first in our new arrangement, have been very encouraging, and I hope we can continue to move this series along into the forefront of sociology of religion publishing. There are several more proposals on the drawing board, so the future is looking bright. I am always happy to have additional ideas for books, as there is no upper limit on volumes we can publish in a year. We do require original materials of high quality whose authorship is primarily composed of ASR members and whose content is within the remit of the series title.

Receipt of a ballot with this newsletter is confirmation that your 2006 dues have been paid. If we do not show your dues as paid as of this mailing, instead of a ballot you have a dues notice. Payment of dues and receipt of same in the Executive Office prior to 15 April will bring you a ballot for a quick turn around by the 1 May deadline.

Bill Swatos

Executive Officer

CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT-ELECT

MARK CHAVES

Professor and Head of the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Congregations in America (Harvard 2004), Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in a Religious Organization (Harvard 1997), and articles that have appeared in general interest sociology journals as well as in sociology of religion journals. He is Principal Investigator on the second wave of the National Congregations Study, to occur in 2006. Mark was a founding member of the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section Council (1995), has served on the Board of Directors of the Religious Research Association (1997-1999), and was Program Chair for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s 2001 meetings. He currently serves on the SSSR Council and is chair-elect of the ASA’s Sociology of Religion Section.

MARY JO NEITZ

Ph.D., University of Chicago. Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri, Columbia, where she has taught since 1980. She has been a member of ASR since that year too, and has frequently presented papers, organized sessions, and served as discussant at annual meetings. She has also served two terms on ASR’s Executive Council and once on the Publications Committee. In 1999, she gave the Paul Hanly Furfey lecture, “Queering the Dragonfest: Changing Sexualities in a Post Patriarchal Religion,” which has been reprinted numerous times. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in religion, feminist theories and methodologies, and the sociology of culture as evidenced in such books as Sociology on Culture; Culture: Sociological Perspectives; and Charisma and Community: A Study of Religious Commitment within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Co-edited volumes include, Feminist Narratives in the Sociology of Religion and Sex, Lies, and Sanctity: Religion and Deviance in Contemporary North America. She is currently at work on a multi-site, multi-vocal ethnography about church and community in formerly rural places, Encounters in the Heartland: Congregational Stories from a Post-Rural Landscape. Mary Jo has received a number of teaching and mentoring awards at the University of Missouri, including the Gold Chalk Award and the Alumnae Anniversary Award for contributions to the education of women.

CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL

COURTNEY BENDER earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and is an Assistant Professor in the Religion and Sociology Departments at Columbia University. She is author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God’s Love We Deliver (Chicago 2003) and articles on religious diversity and religious practice in the United States, including a co-authored article forthcoming in Sociology of Religion. Courtney has received several research grants and awards, and is a Young Scholar in American Religion (IUPUI). She has served as a member of the ASA Religion Section nominations committee (2001) and organizer of ASA Religion Regular Session panels (2006).

JOY CHARLTON, Ph.D., Northwestern University, is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Swarthmore College. She is most well known in the sociology of religion for her long-term research on clergywomen, with articles published most recently in JSSR and Sociology of Religion. She now serves as the Book Review Editor for JSSR and on the editorial boards of JSSR and SoR. She has served on elected and appointed committees of SSSR, RRA, and the ASA Sociology of Religion Section. For ASR she has served on the Fichter Research Grant committee for three years, one year as chair.

KATIE DAY, Ph.D., Temple University (Urban Sociology, 1996) is Charles A. Schieren Professor of Church and Society, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, where she has been on the faculty since 1985. Her publications include three books (Prelude to Struggle: African American Clergy and Organizing for Community Development, Difficult Conversations, and Modern Work and Human Meaning [co-authored with John Raines]) as well as numerous chapters in anthologies related to religion and politics. Her primary research interests have focused on race, religion, and social mobilization, as reflected in articles and presentations at ASR as well as other academic meetings. Currently she is completing a book with Tim Nelson on church arson (Still Smoldering).

SUSAN A. EISENHANDLER, Ph.D., is a qualitative sociologist with an abiding interest in the relationship between life course and identity. Her most recent book, Keeping the Faith in Late Life, examines the socioreligious worlds and folkways of faith among elders in Connecticut. Previously she and a university colleague, the late L. Eugene Thomas, worked collaboratively on two volumes, Religion, Belief, and Spirituality in Late Life (1999), and Aging and the Religious Dimension. Susan is a longstanding member of several professional societies and was a co-founder of the Religion and Spirituality formal interest group of the Gerontological Society of America. She has regularly attended and presented papers at ASR meetings. She is a member of the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Connecticut where she teaches courses in aging, community, religion, and ethics.

LAURA LEMING is an assistant professor in the Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Department at the University of Dayton (Ohio). Her Ph.D. is from Boston College (2000). Book chapters include “Protecting Children on the Margins,” in Children’s Human Rights (2005) and “The Millennial Generation on Catholic Campuses,” in The Handbook of Research on Catholic Higher Education (2003). She has articles forthcoming in Sociological Quarterly and the Review of Religious Research. Laura has presented at ASR four times and was a recipient of a Fichter award for her research in southern India, while teaching on UD’s faculty in Bangalore.

BILL MIROLA is currently Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Marian College in Indianapolis. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1995. He is co-editor (with Monahan and Emerson) of Sociology of Religion: A Reader (2001), and has published articles in Sociology of Religion, Social Problems, and Social Science History, principally addressing issues of religion and social class as well as religious dynamics in social movement activism. From 1999-2001, he was a researcher for the “Religion and Urban Culture Project” sponsored by the Lilly Endowment, for the Polis Center at IUPUI. Bill has been a member of ASR since 1990 and often serves as session organizer, convener, discussant, and presenter at annual meetings. He has recently accepted a three-year term on the editorial board of Sociology of Religion, and is also a member of SSSR and ASA.

VOTING INSTRUCTIONS

In an attempt to preserve the anonymity of ballots and accuracy of the voting process, the Nominating Committee has provided a two-envelope system for mailing your ballots. The outside envelope, addressed to the Executive office must contain your signature. Completion and use of this envelope is required for your vote to be counted. If this envelope is not included with this newsletter, contact the Executive Office immediately, and a replacement will be sent. If your institution requires you to use a university envelope in order to receive franking privileges, then you will need to place this signature envelope inside the university envelope. Use of the inner, “ASR Ballot” envelope is optional, but protects your anonymity.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

At its August 2005 meeting, Council passed the following amendment to the ASR’s Constitution and referred it to the membership for ratification. Amend Article IV, ¶ 1, to add the following:

An Assistant to the Executive Officer for Financial Affairs will be designated by the Executive Officer. This person must be a member of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, whose appointment must be approved by the ASR Council. The Assistant’s term will be renewable annually by the Executive Officer and will expire with the expiration of the term of the Executive Officer. The Assistant will be expected to become familiar with the routine financial operations of the ASR, to substitute for the Executive Officer in receiving and disbursing funds in emergency situations or when the Executive Officer is unable to do so, and to attend ASR Council meetings in the absence of the Executive Officer or when invited to do so.

Implementation: If adopted, the by-law will be implemented at this summer's meeting. The ASR Constitution and By-Laws is available on the ASR Website: www.sociologyofreligion.com.

NEWS OF MEMBERS

The Louisville Institute has announced recent grants that include a number of our members: Rebecca Y. Kim and Carolyn Chen have been awarded Dissertation Fellowships. General Grant recipients include Reg Bibby, Tony Healy, and Richard Wood. Congratulations to all!

Cristina Rocha has published Zen in Brazil: The Quest for Cosmopolitan Modernity (University of Hawai‘i Press).

Steve Warner has been elected President-elect of SSSR, and Kirk Hadaway was elected President-elect of RRA. This year’s RRA/SSSR meetings will take place in Portland, Oregon, 19-22 October. Mike Emerson is the RRA program chair. Don Miller is the current SSSR President, and Dan Olson is completing his second year as RRA president, when he will deliver his presidential address. For further information see www.sssrweb.org or http://rra.hartsem.edu.

The annual Denton Conference of the Network for the Study of Implicit Religion will be held 5-7 May. Denton Hall is a beautifully situated historic property containing a modern conference and study center located in Yorkshire, with relatively easy access from Bradford, Leeds, and York. For further information regarding location, fees, and the possibility of still submitting a paper contact Edward Bailey via email at eibailey@csircs.freeserve.co.uk.

Doug Cowan has moved from the University of Missouri Kansas City to Renison College/University of Waterloo (Ontario), as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Social Development Studies: decowan @uwaterloo.ca.