ASR NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Review Proposed Constitutional And By-Law Revisions
Volume 33, Number 2 Winter 1999
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 Jim Kelly (chair), Nancy Eiesland, and Otto Maduro. They offer
hard choices, but these choices are themselves a sign of the outstanding
scholarship that is to be found among our ASR colleagues. The Executive
Officer is particularly grateful to the committee for the timeliness of
its work and for its confidence in his service as his term comes for renewal.
In addition, Council approved several changes in the Constitution and thorough-going
By-law revisions. We are bringing these to you for approval as well. Please
vote! Please also follow the voting instructions so that your vote
counts.
You are reminded of our 61st Annual Meeting in Chicago, 5-7 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. You should
know that not all publishers--including one of my own publishers--are cooperative
with us in regard to the book exhibit. Any word you can put to y/our publisher(s)
cannot hurt. Note the deadline 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 (in the meantime,
see the ASR website: www. sociologyofreligion.com
>).
We are continuing to work on the Membership Directory and the database
project that underlies it. In early February we undertook a major computer
upgrade, and are now about up to 1999 in our technology. If you are still
sitting on a Membership Directory Information sheet, please return it pronto.
We hope that by the time of the Spring issue of N & A those
of you who are on email can go to our web site for the preliminary program.
We have also undertaken a major membership mailing to AAR members who
listed "sociology" as an interest area in a membership survey
AAR initiated several years ago, and that has brought positive results.
Mass mailings seldom bring in large numbers of new members, but they keep
ASR's name before appropriate audiences.
I am happy to report that in spite of the market gyrations that occurred
in fits and starts during 1998, our reserve and designated funds remain
in exceptionally good health. A number of you have taken the opportunity
to make contributions along with your dues, and these are much appreciated.
Please do not be standoffish about making donations to the ASR!
Bill Swatos
CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT-ELECT
ANTHONY J. BLASI
Associate Professor, Sociology, Tennessee State University. B.A., history,
St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas; M.A., Ph.D., sociology, University
of Notre Dame; M.A., New Testament, St. Michael's, Toronto; Th.D., ethics,
Regis College/University of Toronto. Author or co-author of 12 professional
books, including A Phenomenological Transformation of the Social Scientific
Study of Religion (1985), Early Christianity as a Social Movement
(1989); Making Charisma: The Social Construction of Paul's Public Image
(1991); A Sociology of Johannine Christianity (1996), and Organized
Religion and Mental Health (1999). Author or co-author of over 40 articles.
including work outside the sociology of religion in the areas of sociological
theory, the civil rights movement, urban ecology, the history of social
thought (Park, Mead), sociology of music, symbolic interactionism, and
moral conflict. Current projects include a methodological essay on the
social scientific study of the early Christian movement and a statistical
analysis of religious participation preventative effect on feelings of
depression among Italian young adults. Tony has served the ASR previously
as book review editor (1983-85), council member (1985-87), and member of
the International Coordination Committee (1995-96); this year he begins
a three-year term on the McNamara Award Committee. Tony also provides a
floppy-disk electronic bibliography in the sociology of religion of legendary
proportions, soon to appear on the web in an interdisciplinary context.
LYNN DAVIDMAN
Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and American Civilization, Brown
University. Lynn's research within the sociology of religion has often
focused on gender and religion. Her Tradition in a Rootless World
(California) won the 1992 National Jewish Book Award in the category of
contemporary Jewish life. In 1994 she co-edited Feminist Perspectives
on Jewish Studies (Yale), and she has just completed a manuscript entitled
Motherloss that will be published by California. The field of religious
practices in everyday life, or religion outside the institutions, has been
an interest of Lynn's for several years. In June 1998, with Karen McCarthy
Brown, she organized a conference at the Center for the Study of American
Religion on "Religion Outside the Institutions," which included
papers on Yoruba revival in the United States, home births, wicca, the
Christian militia, and voguing dancing balls--all now forthcoming in book
form. Her next research project is an ethnographic, grounded theory study
of secular Jews that will seek to answer such questions as what are secular
Jews, how do they identify themselves, what does the term mean to the people
who use it, and what sorts of institutions, if any, do they form. Lynn
has been a member of the ASR since 1983, has served two terms as a member
of the Executive Council, and also served on the nominating committee.
She has published in Sociology of Religion, as well as serving as
a reviewer for the journal.
CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL
MICHAEL W. CUNEO earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto
in 1989. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at Fordham University. He has been a member for ASR for
10 years. With Anthony Blasi he has produced two sociology of religion
reference books; and his articles and reviews have appeared in Studies
in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Contemporary Sociology, and JSSR.
His major books are Catholics Against the Church (University
of Toronto Press, 1990) and The Smoke of Satan (Oxford University
Press, 1997). He is currently working on Battling the Demonic: Exorcism
in American Culture (forthcoming, 2000). He served as a member of ASR's
nominating committee last year. During the 1998-99 academic year, Mike
is an Affiliate Fellow and Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton's
Center for the Study of American Religion; and he has been appointed Visiting
Distinguished Professor in Catholic Studies at the University of Dayton
for the Fall 1999 semester.
GRACE DAVIE is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University
of Exeter and specializes in the sociology of religion. She is the author
of Religion in Britain since 1945 (Blackwell 1994) and has just
completed a book on Religion in Europe for Oxford University Press
to be published 1999/2000. She has written numerous articles and chapters
on both the British and the European situations. From 1994-98 she was the
Secretary General of the SISR and in this capacity convened the conferences
held in Québec (1995) and Toulouse (1997). She currently chairs
the ASR's International Coordination committee.
WILLIAM D. DINGES is Associate Professor of Religious Studies
in the School of Religion at Catholic University of America and a member
of its Life Cycle Institute. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies
in 1983 from the University of Kansas. He has published articles on various
aspects of religion and culture in Sociological Analysis, U.S. Catholic
Historian, America, and other scholarly and popular journals and anthologies.
He was a participant/contributor to the "Fundamentalism Project"
(Marty and Appleby) and to the "Being Right" project on conservative
Catholics in the United States. He is currently engaged with Dean Hoge,
Mary Johnson, and Juan Gonzales in a Lilly-funded national study of young
adult Catholics.
BRYAN FROEHLE is Director of the Center for Applied Research
in the Apostolate (CARA), a religious research center at Georgetown University
(Washington, DC), where he also completed his undergraduate work. He completed
his master's and doctorate in sociology at the University of Michigan,
with a dissertation under the co-direction of Mayer Zald and Daniel Levine
that was a comparative analysis of Catholic and Evangelical grassroots
religious communities in Caracas. Upon completing his Ph.D. he accepted
a faculty position at the University of South Carolina until moving to
CARA in 1995. He has published and presented over a dozen articles and
papers, including a book in Spanish on religion and society in Venezuela
and an article from his dissertation in Sociology of Religion. He
has written and edited the CARA Catholic Ministry Formation Directory
and the CARA Compendium of Vocations Research. Bryan served as 1998
ASR program chair and has taken primary responsibility for developing the
ASR web page; he also serves on the Development committee.
MARY JOHNSON is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Emmanuel
College in Boston. She is currently engaged in two national research projects.
One is a study of post-Vatican II recruits to Catholic religious orders
of women in the United States. The other, as part of a team, is a study
of attitudes and beliefs of young adult Catholics in the United States.
She has contributed chapters to an edited collection in the sociology of
religion, articles to various Catholic publications, and is an associate
editor of Sociology of Religion and a member of the ASR's Publications
committee.
CHRISTIAN SMITH is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D.
in sociology from Harvard University. In addition to his journal articles
and book chapters, Chris is the author of American Evangelicalism: Embattled
and Thriving (Chicago 1998), Christian America?: What Evangelicals
Really Want (California 1999), Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central
America Peace Movement (Chicago 1996), The Emergence of Liberation
Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory (Chicago 1991);
and editor of Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement
Activism (Routledge 1996) and Latin American Religion in Motion
(Routledge 1999).
CANDIDATE FOR EXECUTIVE OFFICER
WILLIAM H. SWATOS, JR. has served as Executive Officer of the ASR since 1996 and is eligible for re-election. Bill received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Kentucky in 1973 and was named that department's distinguished alumnus in 1989. His publication record includes several dozen articles and almost 20 books of which he has been editor, co-editor, author, or co-author, most recently the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. From 1989 to 1994 he served as editor of Sociological Analysis/Sociology of Religion, and for three years prior to that as book review editor, serving part of that term simultaneously as an elected member of Executive Council. Prior to becoming Executive Officer, he was chair of the Development committee. Bill is also Executive Officer of the Religious Research Association and a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Ballots are available only via the print newsletters previously mailed to members.
Members are invited to request books, whether their own or by others,
to be included in the ASR-sponsored joint book exhibit at the annual meeting.
You may request as many books as you like, as long as they are in print
and you supply the necessary information. There are no guarantees that
they will be exhibited, as we are dependent upon publisher cooperation.
You do not have to vote in order to submit this exhibit form, nor do
you need to complete this form in order to vote, but the 1 April
postmark deadline applies to both! If you prefer, you may submit
preprinted materials about a book or books, but make sure all the information
indicated here is included; you may alternatively reproduce this form to
list additional books. You may also fax the book request
form--but not the ballot!--to the Executive Office at 727-844-7332.
For each book supply:
Author(s): ________________________________________________ (last names
are sufficient)
Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher's address (essential):
______________________________________________________________________________________
Author(s): ________________________________________________ (last names
are sufficient)
Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher's address (essential):
______________________________________________________________________________________
Author(s): ________________________________________________ (last names
are sufficient)
Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________
Publisher's address (essential):
_______________________________________________________________________________________
NEWS OF MEMBERS
Michael Wilkinson has completed his Ph.D. thesis, Global Migration
and Transformation Among Canadian Pentecostals at the University of
Ottawa. He is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Canadian Nazarene College,
Calgary.
Edward Bailey is editing the new journal Implicit Religion
published in the UK by Maney, Hudson Road, Leeds LS9 7D1. The editorial
board and council includes a number of ASR members, inter alia Eileen
Barker, Roberto Cipriani, Clark Roof, Anthony Blasi, Meerten ter Borg,
Grace Davie, Leslie Francis, and Bill Swatos. The journal will be published
semi-annually.
Durk Hak will co-convene an international congress But the
End is Not Yet, to be held at the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden (Netherlands)
23-24 March 2000, with abstracts due 30 September 1999. The organizers
seek papers that deal with empirical chiliastic movements from cultural/social
anthropological, historical, psychological and sociological perspectives,
with a comparative element. For further information, contact Durk at <d.h.hak@ppsw.rug.nl>.
FUNDING
The Fund for Theological Education includes a Doctoral Fellows
Program in its offerings this year. It is for African-American students
entering a Ph.D. or Th.D. program in religion or theology in the fall of
1999, benefits include attendance at a preparatory summer conference and
a stipend of up to $15k, renewable for an additional year. The Fund also
has a Dissertation Fellows program for African-American students who are
at the writing stage of their dissertation; the benefits are the same,
except that the stipend is nonrenewable. Contact the Fund at <fte@thefund.org>.
OTHER ITEMS
Alamo Rent-a-Car has offered us a discount program for which
a card is enclosed with this mailing. It may or may not be better than
what you can get through other programs, and you should always check with
your travel agent about alternative pricing.
Southern Connecticut State University Women's Studies Program will sponsor a conference entitled "Global Justice/Women's Rights," 1-2 October 1999. Session/paper proposals must be received by June 4. Contact <womenstudies@scsu.ctstateu.edu>.