Dear SAR Community,
Welcome to the August 2025 edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter! Happy start to the fall semester! If you have any announcements or updates, you’d like included in the upcoming newsletter, feel free to send them my way.
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
August 27th, 2025
News and Announcements
New Editorial Team for the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion Series
We are pleased to share that the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion book series, published by Palgrave Macmillan, has a new editorial team. Sowparnika Balaswaminathan and David Kloos are joining Hillary Kaell as co-editors.
As the official book series of the Society for the Anthropology of, Contemporary Anthropology of Religion publishes ethnographically and theoretically rich works that explore religion across the globe. The series welcomes contributions on a wide range of themes, including lived religion, material religion, ritual, embodiment, social memory, ecology, gender, conflict and violence, politics, law and governance, globalization, technology, pluralism, and diversity.
Call for new submissions
The editors are currently inviting proposals for both monographs and edited volumes. The series encourages submissions from first-time authors as well as established scholars. For details on how to submit a proposal, please see the guidelines here.
For inquiries or to discuss your project, you may contact the editors directly: Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, Concordia University – sowparnika.nathan@concordia.ca; Hillary Kaell, McGill University – hillary.kaell@mcgill.ca ; David Kloos, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies – kloos@kitlv.nl
New Books and Articles
Checking the Fruit: Skepticism as Epistemic Politics in American Evangelicalism”
Sam Victor
August 2025
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore
July 2025
Nurhaizatul Jamil
University of Illinois Press
Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion
June 2025
Edited by Justine Bakker and David Kline
Fordham University Press
Islam: A New History from Muhammad to Present
May 2025
John Tolan
Princeton University Press
Circulations: Modernist Imaginaries of Colonialism and Decolonization in Papua New Guinea
May 2025
Courtney Handman
University of California Press
Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire
March 2025
Candace Lukasik
New York University Press
Life in Language: Mission Feminists and the Emergence of a New Protestant Subject.
March 2025
Ingie Hovland
The University of Chicago Press
Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong
February 2025
Micah F. Morton
University of Wisconsin Press
Death in a Foreign Land: Turkish Muslim Exiles and the Making of Theodicy
January 2025
Kim Shively
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
The Mormon Archive’s First Ten Thousand Years: Infrastructure, Materiality, Ontology, and Resurrection in Religious Transhumanism
January 2025
Jon Bialecki
Comparative Studies in History and Society, Cambridge University Press
Call for Proposals and Opportunities
The 2025 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, taking place November 19–23 in New Orleans, centers on the theme “Ghosts,” inviting anthropologists to explore how the past lingers and shapes the present, as well as the creative and immaterial aspects of human experience. This theme is highly relevant to members of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR), as it resonates with longstanding interests in spirits, ancestors, memory, ritual, and the ways religious communities engage with the unseen or spectral in everyday life. Early registration closes July 31! Register here
SAR is an active section of the AAA and regularly hosts sessions at the Annual Meeting, including panels, the Roy Rappaport Lecture, and award presentations such as the Clifford Geertz Prize and the graduate student paper prize.
Looking ahead, the AAR Annual Meeting in Boston is scheduled for November 22–25, 2025. This flagship event brings together thousands of religion scholars for panels, networking, and mentoring, and includes sessions from the Anthropology of Religion Unit. Register here.