Do you have a paper that can address or throw light on global or U.S. current events? Have you just completed the fieldwork or research on an exciting topic in the Anthropology of Religion that you wish to share immediately with a community of scholars? If so, the SAR Biannual Conference may be a great place to present your paper! Please submit your paper or panel proposal no later than March 15, 2025 at this link.
Author: AAA Web Admin
UCSB Dormitory Registration
Santa Barbara hotel accommodations are expensive, so all attendees of the SAR 2025 Biennial Conference are encouraged to make reservations for staying at the UC Santa Barbara Manzanita Village dormitories. Only $86/night single room; $60/night/person double room. Most rooms have ocean views and the buildings are a brief walk to the beach and the campus Lagoon with wild birds in the early morning and dusk. Meals can be taken in a nearby campus Cafeteria.
Click here to register for on-campus accommodations at UCSB
UCSB Dormitory Priority Registration closes: April 15, 2025 (after this, rooms may not be available)
Travel Grants to the SAR Biannual Conference in Santa Barbara
Call for Travel Grant Applications for SAR Biennial Conference
in Santa Barbara, Jun 21-23, 2025
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) will make up to five (5) awards of US $450 each to underrepresented and financially needy scholars and Ph.D. students who: 1) are members of AAA and SAR; 2) will be attending and presenting a paper for the 2025 SAR Biennial Conference in Santa Barbara.
To apply, please fill out the form at this link by Saturday, March 15, 2025.
We need:
- An accepted abstract for the SAR Biannual Conference
- A personal statement outlining your current position/status, your doctoral degree date (or expected) and granting institution, your current employment, and explaining why you fit the terms of the travel grant (300 words maximum)
- A 2-page c.v.
Workshops at the 2025 SAR Biennial Conference
We are hosting three workshops designed specifically for graduate students and early-career scholars. Each workshop has a capacity of up to 24 participants (on a first-come, first-served basis), and attendees are welcome to join more than one. Please use this link to sign up for any of these events after you have registered for the conference with AAA.
- Navigating Grants and the Job Market — Prof. Angie Heo (Univ. of Chicago) and Prof. Joe Blankholm (UC Santa Barbara)
- Academic Publishing — Prof. Daromir Rudnyckyj (University of Victoria, B.C.) and Hillary Kaell (McGill Univ., editor of Contemporary Anthropology of Religion Book Series with Palgrave Macmillan Press)
- Engaging with Popular Media and Publishing in Newspapers/Magazines — Prof. Hannah H. Gould (Univ. of Melbourne)
Call for Travel Grants for the 2024 AAA Annual Meeting
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) will make up to four (4) awards of US $500 each to scholars of color and underemployed scholars who will be attending the 2024 Annual Meeting in Tampa and will be participating in SAR-sponsored panels. Scholars from groups underrepresented in the academy and those who do not have secure employment are welcome to apply.
To apply, please email the following three (3) documents to Mayfair Yang (yangm@ucsb.edu), SAR President, by November 6, 2024:
- An accepted abstract for an SAR-sponsored panel at the AAA annual meeting.
- Notice of paper acceptance from the AAA.
- A personal statement outlining your current position/status, your doctoral degree date (or expected) and granting institution, and explaining why you fit the terms of the award (250 words maximum).
SAR Call for Pitches
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) column in Anthropology News invites submissions inspired by fieldwork, popular media, or current events. We welcome short essays (1600 words maximum) with audio or visual supplements. Accepted submissions will be published in 2025.
Anthropology News publishes engaging anthropology for a general audience rather than inward-facing scholarly discussions. “Vivid description, captivating tales, and adventurous forms of writing are at the heart of what we do. Think short-form magazine-style stories with scientific bite—low on jargon, high on storytelling.” Below are AN’s upcoming themes in 2025. For more on these themes, see AN’s Call for Pitches.
- Signal/Noise
- Invisibility
- Fluidity
If you are interested, send your 250-word pitch to Angie Heo (email: heo@uchicago.edu, write “SAR Pitch 2025” in the subject heading). A successful pitch includes: 1) elements of a story (e.g., character, event, site, experience, etc…) and 2) overall connection to the anthropological study of religion (broadly conceived). Pitches will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Call for Submissions: 2024 Geertz Prize
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion
A section of the American Anthropological Association
announces the 2024 juried competition for the
CLIFFORD GEERTZ PRIZE
IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION
The Geertz Prize seeks to encourage excellence in the anthropology of religion by recognizing an outstanding recent book in the field. The prize is named in honor of the late Professor Clifford Geertz, in recognition of his many distinguished contributions to the anthropological study of religion. In awarding the Prize, the Society hopes to foster innovative scholarship, the integration of theory with ethnography, and the connection of the anthropology of religion to the larger world.
Eligibility
Any single-authored or co-authored book focusing on the anthropology of religion, broadly defined, is eligible for the Prize. Edited volumes, textbooks, and reference works are not eligible, nor are works in which religion is a secondary subject. The book’s author need not be an anthropologist by profession, but the work should draw on and respond to research and theory within the anthropology of religion. Books must have a publication date of 2022 or 2023. Books that have already been reviewed for the Prize will not be reconsidered.
The prize will be awarded at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in November 2024.
Submission guidelines
If you would like your book to be considered, please fill in the new online form. After you have completed the form, please arrange for copies of the book to be sent to all members of the Geertz Prize Committee. Please contact Naomi Haynes (Naomi.Haynes@ed.ac.uk) to request addresses. Books must be submitted in hard copy to be considered. The committee will not accept electronic submissions.
Please direct all questions to the chair. Deadline for submission of books is:
April 1, 2024
Naomi Haynes
Chair, 2024 Geertz Prize Committee
Naomi.Haynes@ed.ac.uk
AAA 2023 Travel Grants Awarded
Ahead of the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Anthropology of Religion awarded four travel grants to scholars from groups underrepresented in the academy and those who do not have secure employment. The following presenters received funding to deliver papers at the conference in Toronto:
- Valerio Di Fonzo, University of New Mexico, “Who is the Catholic Church? Examining the Practices of a Jesuit NGO in the Peruvian Amazon”
- Marc R. Loustau, Springfield College, “‘The Means of Grace’: Toward a Weberian Social Anthropology of Catholic Bureaucracy”
- Muhammad Osama Imran, University of Minnesota, “Breaths of Extimacy: Haunted Subjectivities and Free Submission in the Sufi Practice of Zikr”
- Abdul Majeed Ottakandathil, McGill University, “Prefiguration of the present and reappearance of the past in the lives of converts to Islam in South India”
SAR Student Paper Prizes Awarded
At this month’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the 2023 SAR Student Paper Prize winner and runner-up were announced as follows:
The winner was Irene Promodh (University of Michigan) for “(Un)Holy Gold: Arabi Ponnu and a Transregional Politics of Caste Among Kerala Christians.”
The runner-up was Ray Qu (University of Virginia) for “How spirits hope? Embodied suffering, complex temporality, and an expanded spectrum of hope in North China.”
Geertz Prize 2023 Winner and Honorable Mentions
At this month’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the 2023 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, as well as two honorable mentions, were awarded to the following recipients:
Winner: The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China (Columbia University Press) by Guangtian Ha.
Honorable Mention: Christianity, Politics and the Afterlives of War in Uganda: There is Confusion (Bloomsbury Academic) by Henni Alava.
Honorable Mention: Guarded by Two Jaguars: A Catholic Parish Divided by Language and Faith (The University of Arizona Press) by Eric Hoenes del Pinal.
