For individuals whose papers have already been accepted at the 2025 SAR Biennial Meeting yet who can no longer attend in-person in Santa Barbara, we are offering the opportunity to join their panels virtually via Zoom. Note that this option is only for individual papers that are part of already-accepted panels or that have been assigned to panels; it is not for a whole panel.
Submission Deadline: If you are considering this option, please submit the form no later than Sunday, June 1, 2025.
The SAR Biennial will take place June 21st-23rd 2025 in Santa Barbara CA. For those who cannot make these dates of the Biennial, there will be a later call for those whose papers were accepted for the AAA Conference in New Orleans. At that time, if your paper was accepted for the SAR Biennial, and you were not able to present, you can apply to present via an SAR Zoom meeting to be held about 2-3 weeks before the AAA.
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.
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.
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)
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)
Final Report Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) 2023 Biennial Conference University of Victoria, May 12-14, 2023
The 2023 Biennial Meetings of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion were held at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples from May 12 to 14, 2023. Under the theme of “Religious Assemblages,” the conference was hosted by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria and co-organized with the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. Fifteen University of Victoria undergraduate and graduate students provided indispensable support as volunteers. A welcome ceremony was held with Doug and Kathy Horne in recognition of the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
Indigenous Tsawout elders Doug and Kathy Horne delivered the welcome address to the SAR membership.
During the conference 110 papers were delivered on 29 panels by scholars based in Canada, the US, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Finland, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Israel. There were 120 total registrants and panels were organized in 3 or 4 concurrent sessions. Roughly half of the attendees were graduate students.
The conference sought to provide career development opportunities for graduate students and junior scholars. There were 3 mentoring sessions for junior scholars on writing for the public (organized by Sophie Bjork James, Vanderbilt University), navigating the academic job market (organized by Rachel Brown, University of Victoria), and grant writing (organized by Courtney Handman, University of Texas). There were 4 workshops for graduate students to develop scholarship on the following topics: NGOs & Humanitarianism (directed by Britt Halvorson, Colby College), Postcolonial, Decolonial, & Anti-Colonial Approaches (directed by Angie Heo, University of Chicago), Anthropology & Theology (directed by Basit Iqbal, MacMaster University), and Religion & Environment (directed by Mayfair Yang, UC Santa Barbara).
University of Victoria faculty member Rachel Brown organized a membership session on navigating the academic job market
There were 3 keynote addresses at the SAR biennial. The Roy Rappaport Distinguished Lecture in the Anthropology of Religion was delivered by Irfan Ahmad of Ibn Haldun University. The Albert Hung Lecture was delivered by Lucinda Ramberg of Cornell University. Daromir Rudnyckyj of the University of Victoria delivered the SAR Presidential Lecture.
Lucinda Ramberg (Cornell) delivered the 2023 Albert Hung LectureDaromir Rudnyckyj (U Victoria) delivered the 2023 SAR Presidential Lecture
The conference was financially supported by the SAR membership and a number of units at the University of Victoria including: the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, the Centre for Global Studies, the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Global South Program, the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice-President Academic and Provost, the Office of the Vice-President Associate Vice-President of Research, the Religion, Culture and Society Program, and the World History Program.
University of Victoria graduate students William Campbell (standing) and Leah Mernaugh (seated middle) and undergraduates Jonvie Lockhart (seated right) and Mackenzie Reed (seated left) ensured that the conference ran smoothly
Feedback from the conference was overwhelmingly positive. Attendees commented on the depth and rigor of the scholarly dialogue inspired by the papers and keynote addresses. Also well-regarded was the conference organization, which many attendees commented was impeccably coordinated. Finally, the weather cooperated and Victoria and the campus was revealed in full flower, so much so that many colleagues expressed an intent to apply for any positions that might come open in the coming years!
Religious Assemblages Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Conference
Attendees of the SAR 2023 Biennial Meeting at the University of Victoria are invited to join any of the following mentoring sessions.
Mentorship Session: Writing for the Public (Open to all) Organized by Sophie Bjork James (Vanderbilt U) Friday, May 12, 1:30-2:45 PM in MAC D114 This mentorship session covers strategies for writing op-eds and other public writing about religion. We will cover reasons to or not to engage in public writing as well as resources available for scholars wanting to engage in public writing.
Mentorship Session Grant Writing (Open to all) Organized by Courtney Handman (U of Texas) Saturday, May 13, 9:00-10:15 AM in MAC D114 This mentorship session will go over some of the main pitfalls to avoid and the most important elements to include in preparing a grant application. We will primarily discuss the Wenner-Gren application, although the discussion will be relevant to almost any dissertation research grant.
Mentorship Session: Navigating the Academic Job Market (Open to all) Organized by Rachel Brown (U of Victoria) Saturday, May 13, 2:45-4:15 PM in MAC D111 “Brace yourself: Navigating a declining academic job market.” In this mentoring session Dr. Rachel Brown will explore some strategies for navigating the ever-changing, declining and often confusing academic job market.
This year we will host a number of small group workshops during the SAR 2023 biennial meeting. Each workshop will have room for up to four graduate students and be led by one faculty facilitator. Each graduate student will pre-circulate a short (no more than 10 pages double spaced) paper to their small group prior to the conference. During the conference, the faculty facilitator will meet privately with the small group and discuss the papers, as well as issues and concerns related to the topic more broadly. It is a great chance to have some focused attention on your work, meet other students working on the same issues, and develop your project.
Small group workshop topics and faculty facilitators:
NGOs & Humanitarianism — Britt Halvorson, Colby College
Postcolonial, Decolonial, & Anti-Colonial Approaches – Angie Heo, University of Chicago
Anthropology & Theology – Basit Iqbal, MacMaster University
Religious Migrations/Migrating Religion – Candace Lukasik, Mississippi State University
Religion & Environment – Mayfair Yang, UC Santa Barbara
If you are interested in participating in one of these sessions, please turn in an application by March 20 that includes:
the name of the session you are interested in
a brief description of the short paper you would present (200 words max)
Please send your application via email to daromir@uvic.ca. The deadline for applications is March 20, 2023.
You may apply to participate in up to two different sessions.
If selected, you will need to send your paper to your facilitator by May 1.
A signature contribution of the anthropology of religion has been to reveal both the overt and covert ways in which religious practice both informs and can be conjoined to myriad other domains of social life. From James Frazer’s interrogation of the pagan roots of Christianity to Saba Mahmood’s insights about the implicit Christianity of liberalism, the anthropology of religion has revealed assemblages of religious forms and practices with other forms and practices that superficially appear to be devoid of religious influence.
The 2023 SAR Spring Conference highlights this enduring contribution and build on it by emphasizing this critical perspective in the study of religion at-large. We seek to showcase disciplinary and interdisciplinary work to highlight and develop understanding of religion both as a lived practice and a category. The conference will be held in person.
Call for Papers
By focusing on religious assemblages we call for papers that underscore how, although religion is sometimes marginalized from other aspects of modernity, religious discourses and practices can be dissociated from older historical formations and re-combined with new elements.
Among the questions we seek to address are: How are religious practices conjoined to practices that appear on the surface to be irreligious? How is religion evident in domains that claim to be secular or irreligious? How do religious traditions amalgamate influences from other traditions that appear to be discrete? How do actual experiences of lived religion depart from orthodox religious traditions? How are modern institutions and forms invested with spiritual significance? How can greater attention to the ways in which religion infuses myriad aspects of contemporary social life facilitate initiatives of decolonization and indigenization?
In addition to research on religion broadly conceived, we seek papers focused on secularism and liberalism, religion at the boundaries of other domains of social life, the relationship between religion and race/ethnicity, indigeneity, class, gender, colonialism, decolonization, and religious formations of white supremacy and ethno-nationalism. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2023. Information on submission can be found here: https://sway.office.com/RI2deMObMaFPrYyr
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion biennial conference will be held May 12-14, 2023 at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia.
Please mark your calendars now and watch for the call for papers, which will be forthcoming this fall.
It will be our first in person conference since 2019 so it will be a wonderful opportunity to get together in person again. As an added bonus, Victoria in May is lovely—an environmental marvel that everyone should experience at least once in their lifetimes!
