We will continue the two-day meeting pattern we initiated in Denver last year, with the ASA Religion Section meeting the day following.  This means our actual session dates will be the 11^th and 12^th of August.  There will be five simultaneous sessions each day, and as customary, the Presidential and Furfey Lectures and Receptions.  The theme for the 2013 meeting is “Tributaries, Eddies and Cross-Currents: Religion Outside the Mainstream.”  Fred Kniss is 2013 President, Nancy Ammerman is our Furfey Lecturer, and Kelly Chong is our Program Chair.

To have a paper or session proposal considered: (1) You must have paid your 2013 dues; and (2) If you are submitting a session proposal, at least one author of each paper included in the session must be a 2013 ASR member.  This same provision applies to discussion and book review panels.  Please visit the “Membership” section of this website to renew your dues or join the Association.

The deadline for submitting session proposals is March 15, 2013, while the submission period for individual papers extends through April 30, 2013.

Whether you plan to be on the program or not, please try to attend our meeting and help us celebrate 75 years.  New York City is easily accessible by air and train, and we promise to have a excellent program lined up for you.

Applications are encouraged from scholars in a variety of disciplines — from practical theology to the social sciences, from history to biblical studies and contextual education — for projects that involve learning from and about living communities of faith. Fellows will explore avenues for making that knowledge available for the sake of those communities’ wellbeing, as well as developing strong academic contributions appropriate to their disciplines. Applicants should have completed their graduate work and be placed in a professional position at the time of application. We especially encourage early-career scholars to apply, but will consider applications from persons who have recently been tenured.

The application deadline is 15 February 2013. For application information and instructions, visit www.hirr.hartsem.edu or contact the Engaged Scholars project office at Hartford Seminary (engagedscholars@hartsem.edu).

*This program is supported by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. and is administered by the Congregational Studies Team: Nancy Ammerman, Anthea Butler, Bill McKinney, Omar McRoberts, Larry Mamiya, Gerardo Marti, Joyce Mercer, James Nieman (project director), Bob Schreiter, and Steve Warner.

The Research Network Sociology of Religion (RN34) has issued its call for papers. The call includes joint sessions with Sociology of Culture at https://dl.dropbox.com/u/56963/CFP%20RN35.pdf, Society and Sports, Sociology of Emotions, Qualitative Methods, and Sociology of Migration.

Click here to download a PDF of the Call:  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/56963/CfP%20-%20RN34%20-%20Sociology%20of%20Religion.pdf

Click here to visit the main conference website: http://www.esa11thconference.eu/call-for-papers

Abstract submission opens on 12 December 2012 and closes 1 February 2013.

Click here for information on how to submit an abstract:  http://www.esa11thconference.eu/abstract-submission

Call for Papers

RN34 – Sociology of Religion

Coordinators:

Anne-Sophie Lamine, anne-sophie.lamine@misha.fr, University of Strasbourg, France

Heidemarie Winkel, hwinkel@uni-potsdam.de<mailto:hwinkel@uni-potsdam.de, University of Postdam, Germany

Religion has often been understood as a response to personal, social or cultural crisis. Classical scholars, such as Peter L. Berger and Max Weber, pointed out that it provides a theodicy of good and evil – an account that gives ultimate meaning in a meaningless world. Religions, Stark and Bainbridge (1985) contend, are other-worldly compensators for individuals in crisis – for those who are deprived from this-worldly rewards. Even advocates of the secularization thesis often acknowledge that crisis and rapid social change in society temporarily motivate the popularity of religion (Bruce 1997).

But religion, once considered to be in crisis under the secularizing powers of modernity, is alive and well in Europe. More than that: religion seems to thrive on what can now be called the crisis of modernity. Modern science, the nation state, capitalism, unrestricted consumption and the globalizing economy, have lost much of their credibility and plausibility in many European countries. In this cultural climate, the voices of traditional religious groups grow louder whereas, some say, we are witnessing a massive turn to holistic forms of spirituality (e.g., Campbell 2007). The atheist-secular worldview is more than ever contested by a fraction of Muslims, Christian creationists, Buddhists and other religious groups while a mirror-like process of anti-identification gives rise to alarmist discourses about the return of religions and particularly on the danger of the “islamization of Europe”. Religion has once again become salient in the re-formation of identity and the construction of imagined communities: uprooted from tradition, modern individuals in identity crisis search for new (religious) values and meanings whereas some European nation states align themselves with their Christian heritage, long-standing traditions and religious pasts. Religion, then, can not easily be understood as the ‘irrational’ Other of modernity – it is instead a common and valid response to the growing crisis of modernity. Jurgen Habermas (2005), once a furious critic of religion, argued from this perspective that intellectuals should include religious partners in the ‘rational’ conversation about modernity since both share a growing critique on the maladies of modernity.

Motivated by these observations, the Research Network Sociology of Religion calls for papers on crisis, critique and change in relation to religion.

Particularly papers are welcomed that discuss the following topics:

01RN34.          Studies dealing with religion in crisis,  i.e. the way religious traditions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and the like – re-structure their organizations, beliefs, and practices and adopt, negotiate or resist processes of modernization, secularization and disenchantment.

02RN34.          Studies dealing with the ways religion provides answers to existential crisis and, particularly, the crisis of modernity  – i.e. how and why Islam, Christianity and other religious-spiritual groups formulate a critique of and alternative to modern science, capitalism, mass-consumption and individualism.

03RN34.          Studies dealing with the way crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization,  i.e., in what particular ways religion gives meaning in everyday life and if, how and why religious identity-formations induce processes of inclusion and exclusion; social cohesion and religious conflict.

04RN34.          Studies focusing on the way religion changes the modern world in Europe and beyond,  i.e., how rapid social changes motivate the appeal and popularity of religion and if, how and why such religions transform private and public domains in Europe.

05RN34.          Sociology of religion (open)

07JS28JS34.     RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture and RN28 Society and Sports.

Sport and religion/spirituality

(Chairs: Davide Sterchele; Stef Aupers & Hubert Knoblauch)

Whereas the analogy between sport and religion has been criticized by many scholars mainly because of the lack (or low relevance) of the transcendent dimension in traditional sport practices, the recent sociological elaborations of the concept of spirituality seems to provide new interesting tools for interpreting the emerging forms of bodily movement. At the same time, the study of the analogies between traditional sports and institutionalized religions still generates relevant sociological insights.

In order to contribute to these streams of analysis and to open new horizons for further studies, the ESA research networks ‘Sociology of Culture’, ‘Society and Sports’, and ‘Sociology of Religion’, invite potential contributors to submit abstracts to the joint session on ‘Sport and religion/spirituality’. The session will thus provide a forum for exchange and sharing among sociologists of culture, sport and religion, who deal with these themes from different but overlapping perspectives.

RN34 web-page : http://www.esareligion.org/

07JS34.            RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture

Cultures of Religion – Religious Cultures

(Chairs: Hubert Knoblauch & Regine Herbrik)

“Religious Culture is quite frequently used, particularly in the French context (“culture religieuse”) relating both, to the general as well as to the specific religious patterns of culture. It may serve well not only to address empirical questions concerning the increasing cultural significance of religion within Europe as well as globally; it may also connect recent theoretical approaches in the sociology of culture on the one hand with approaches in the sociology of religion. For the joint session we invite, therefore, contributions addressing both empirical as well as theoretical issues concerning “religious cultures”.

11JS34.            RN34 Joint session with RN11 Sociology of emotions

Affects and Emotions in the Field of Religion

(Chairs: Stef Aupers  & Cécile Vermot)

Generations of scholars of theology and religious studies have viewed affects, emotions, and religion as closely related issues. What can be said about the certain shapes, characteristics and forms of this relationship in present times? How far is the research on emotions especially crucial for the understanding of religious life in Europe and for the coexistence, or even living together, of different confessions? What role do “emotional regimes” (Riis/Woodhead) or “feeling rules” (Hochschild) play with regard to the formation of emotional cultures both in religious groups and communities and with regard to the quest for salvation or spirituality of individual persons?

20JS34.            RN34 Joint session with RN20 Qualitative Methods

Qualitative Research on Religion

(Chairs: Regine Herbrik & Bernt Schnettler)

We also encourage participants to present papers concerned with methodological questions related to the specific problems of empirical research in the Study of Religions. Can we transfer methods from other fields of research to the sociology of religion or do we need special, field-specific methods? What can we learn from methods used in neighbouring disciplines? Which sets of methods can be recommended for empirical analyses targeting micro-macro issues in understanding religion? What role does the gender issue play in this? We are especially interested in papers reporting empirical research finding in the sociology of religion using qualitative research methods in combination with methodological reflections.

34JS35.            RN34 Joint session with RN35 Sociology of Migration

Migrant religions as a challenge to European identities

(Chairs: Berta Alvarez-Miranda & Heidemarie Winkel)

Already in classical sociological theory, religion functioned as a looking glass of change in times of crisis. At present, migrant religions are challenging and contributing to a critique of European identities. How do various European contexts accommodate migrant religions? What are the experiences, attitu­des and demands of their followers? How does the treatment of matters related to Islam inform on European identities and their current transformations? What conceptual and empirical tools does socio­logical analysis offer for the understanding of the varieties of internal and external religious critique?

ANNUAL APPLICATION DEADLINE: February 1

The Dissertation Fellowship program is designed to support the final year Ph.D. or Th.D. dissertation writing for students engaged in research pertaining to North American Christianity, especially projects with the potential to strengthen the religious life of North American Christians and their institutions, including seminaries, while simultaneously advancing American religious and theological scholarship.

Learn more about the fellowships at:  http://www.louisville-institute.org/grants/programs/dfdetail.aspx

Religion on the Move: Movement, Migration, Missions and new Media across Religious Traditions

Columbia University Department of Religion

Graduate Conference

Friday, April 26, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Michael D. Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

The history of religion is a history of movement.  But what happens when religion is on the move?

In this conference, we are interested in examining how an interdisciplinary approach to migratory experiences might illuminate the dynamic interplay between the limited possibilities in which people find themselves and the capabilities they nonetheless possess for creating viable, even vibrant, forms of social life.  By treating religion as an embodied and spatial phenomenon that intersects with political and economic structures in complex and often unexpected ways, this conference aims not only to contribute to the nascent field of religion and migration but also to broaden its theoretical and methodological repertoire for future studies of religion on the move inclusive of movement, migration, missions and new media.

A spatial analytics of movement as pilgrimage might draw our attention to the intertwining routes believers trace as they undertake the hajj to Mecca.  Historical attention to the making of regional/national migrations might shed new light on, for example, the unique urban sacred order built by millions of black southerners moving north in the decades of the United States Great Migration, or on the intergenerational histories of peoples displaced because of their religion.  An anthropology of the diffusion of missionaries to far-flung lands might include studies of their roles as evangelists moving along trading routes (Buddhists in Southeast Asia), active participants in colonial expansion (Jesuits in the Americas), or ambivalent resisters to imperial power (Protestant sympathizers with Indian independence).  And a cultural study of new media forms can help map patterns of religious mobility through the emergence of portable devotional materials carried by journeying practitioners.  Whatever our approach, studying religion on the move attunes us to how mobility is not only an aspect of religious experience across traditions, times and spaces, but is also constitutive of religious beliefs, practices and communities.

We encourage submissions from those in all fields with interests in the study of religion.  Our discussion will address, but is by no means limited to, the following questions:

·  How have religious institutions been related to migration through colonial bonds, missionary proselytization, and/or the transnational bridges created by new technologies and media?

·  How have the movements of religious traditions been facilitated by economic links such as medieval mercantile and maritime routes or modern globalized flows of capital?

·  How has religious movement affected material culture, both in the creation of new media forms by people on the move and in the transformation or hybridization of existing cultural forms in their places of destination?

·  How have community practices of transmission been affected by regional and, in the modern period, national migrations, as well as the translation of sacred texts into new languages?

·  How has movement reconstituted the boundaries of religious and ethnic identities? How have these boundaries been inscribed on landscapes through the establishment of new neighborhood enclaves and architectural forms?

·  Has religion been inflected differently in migrations that are forced (expulsion; evacuation; defection) rather than voluntary?

·  Could attention to the embodied nature of migratory experiences shed new light on the study of otherworldly journeys and altered states of consciousness?

Please send a 500-word abstract, along with your name, institution, specialization, and year of study to columbiareligion@gmail.com by December 28, 2012.

All proposals will receive a response by early-February 2013.

a peer-reviewed, international journal focusing on the development of a critical theoretical framework and its application to research on religion.

First issue to be published April 2013

We invite you to submit an article to this journal and encourage you to get your libraries to subscribe to it.

Mobilizing Ideas Editors in Chief,  Rory McVeigh, Daniel Myers, Grace Yukich, and David Ortiz

Annual Conference:  Material Religion

Venue: Durham University, UK

Date: 9-11 April, 2013

Dr Marion Bowman  (Department of Religious Studies, Open University)

Professor David Morgan  (Department of Religion, Duke University)

Professor Veronica Strang  (Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University)

This conference will focus on the physical, material dimension of religious life and practice, one of the major themes of religious research over the last decade. Material forms express and sustain the human search for holiness, transcendence and identity, and attention to the physical can lead scholars to unique and valuable insights.  Commitment to religious communities is learned and displayed through relationships to clothing, food, ritual and decoration, in the home, workplace, street or place of worship. This event will encourage interdisciplinary discussion of the significance of material culture in contemporary religion, including the images and architecture of sacred places and the objects and practices of everyday life.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Material religion in everyday life
• The materiality of gender, class, age and ethnicity
• Sacred objects: statues, icons, relics, holy books, architecture
• Sacred objects in museums and galleries
• Religion, landscape and the environment
• Religion and the arts
• Marketing and consuming religion
• Religion and the body: ritual, experience and emotion
• Health, sickness, disability, death and bereavement
• The materiality of religious media and technologies
• Research methods for the study of material religion

We invite proposals for conference papers (300 words), panels (3-4 papers on a shared theme, 750 words) and posters (200 words). Alternative formats will also be considered. Abstracts must be submitted by November 19th 2012 to Tim Hutchings and Joanne McKenzie at materialreligionconference@gmail.com. Bursaries are available for postgraduate and early career researchers.

SOCREL is the British Sociological Association’s study group on Religion. For more details about the study group and conference please visit www.socrel.org.uk.

The School of Philanthropy at Indiana University invites nominations and applications for a tenured or tenure-track Associate or Full Professor (10-month appointment) beginning in the 2013-14 academic year, with expertise in faith and philanthropy. The candidates backgrounds may come from Philanthropic Studies, Sociology, History, Religious Studies or other appropriate disciplinary areas.

The successful candidate will be a recognized scholar in the area of research in religion and philanthropy. Teaching expectations are one course per semester primarily at the graduate level as well as doctoral student advising. The Lake Chair holder will also serve as an Associate Director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving. As an Associate Director s/he will coordinate the work of the Research Committee of the Lake Institute and the allocation of research funds available through the Lake Institute. Indiana University and IUPUI are well known for their research units working in religion, including the IU Committee on Research in Religion, Society, and Ethics; the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture; The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions; and research-intensive departments in Indianapolis and Bloomington. For a full description of academic programs, see

http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/why-study-at-the-center.

The School of Philanthropy located on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus was recently approved by the University Trustees and the Indiana Higher Education Commission. Building on the Center on Philanthropy’s 25 year history, the School values a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding philanthropy with faculty appointees trained in the humanities, social sciences and other fields. It offers degrees at the Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate level to educate the next generation of scholars and professionals. The School of Philanthropy research environment includes internal grants to catalyze new research, the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, The Fund Raising School, the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study on Giving and Volunteering, the Payton Philanthropic Studies Library, and the Ruth Lilly Archives. The Center for Service and Learning provides resources for civic engagement and service learning components in courses. The School has an aggressive hiring plan to increase the number of full-time faculty appointments in Philanthropic Studies.

IUPUI is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution M/F/D. With over 30,000 students, IUPUI is the third-largest campus in the State and confers more professional degrees than any other campus in Indiana. The School of Philanthropy has endorsed efforts to increase the diversity of its ranks, and accordingly, candidates from under-represented groups in the school are encouraged to apply. The School of Philanthropy is particularly interested in and values candidates who have experience working with students from diverse backgrounds, and a demonstrated commitment to improving access and the conditions in higher education for under-represented students.

Application materials should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of research program and a vision of one’s role in further development of the Lake Institute, and three reference letters. Review of materials will begin on 30 November 2012 and continue until the position is filled.

For questions about the position, please contact the Search Committee Chair:
Dwight Burlingame, Professor of Philanthropic Studies: (dburling@iupui.edu)
(317-274-8490)

To set up a time to speak at 2012 ARNOVA conference with a committee member, please contact:
sopsrch@iupui.edu

We prefer to receive application materials electronically. Please send these as a pdf to:
sopsrch@iupui.edu

If you need to send written materials, please send these to:
School of Philanthropy at Indiana University
ATTN: Lake Chair in Religion and Philanthropy Search
550 West North Street, Suite 301
Indianapolis, Indiana 46202
www.philanthropy@iupui.edu>www.philanthropy@iupui.edu

To read: Candidates must have strong disciplinary training combined with a willingness to engage with STUDENTS AND scholars from multiple disciplines sharing the goal of understanding philanthropic behavior.