At the 2021 SAR business meeting, two winners of the annual Student Paper Prize and one honorable mention were announced. This prize is intended to foster theoretically significant, ethnographically rich work by students at an early stage of their career. The prize includes a cash award of $250 for the winning paper, which might be recommended for publication in Religion and Society. There is also a $100 cash award for the runner up. Starting in 2018, SAR launched a mentorship program that pairs select graduate student finalists with faculty mentors. Finalists have an opportunity to meet with their mentor at the AAA meetings to gain valuable feedback on revising their papers for publication.
In late 2021, the SAR announced the winner and two honorable mentions for the annual Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. Congratulations to all the recognized authors. Click here to learn more about past years’ winners.
Welcome to the AAA Annual Meeting! The SAR has put together a list of panels, talks, and other events that have a religion focus, which can be found on our dedicated AAA meeting page. Whether you are coming to Baltimore in person or rummaging through the virtual space of the Annual Meeting, please join these wonderful discussions!
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion A section of the American Anthropological Association announces the 2021 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 2018 or later. 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 2021.
Submission guidelines
To receive additional information on how to submit a book for consideration, please contact me at timothy.landry@trincoll.edu. Deadline for submission of books is: April 30, 2021
Timothy R. Landry Chair, 2021 Geertz Prize Committee
For the last 20 years, many of the most influential and dominant conversations in the anthropology of religion have focused on ethics, morality, and the subject-making processes of religious practice. These conversations pushed the study of religious traditions – especially Abrahamic ones – to the forefront of anthropological consideration and theory-building after a period at the end of the 20th century in which religion was often seen as just an expression of economic or political forces. Defining religious practice as a subject-making force of its own, much of this work centered on people for whom religious identities had become foundational. But in focusing on subjects for whom religious subjectivities and ethical formations were impossible to ignore, not only were some of the more marginal members of religious communities left to the side, but some of the connections between religious practice and other domains of social life were at times demoted.
The 2021 SAR Spring Conference theme hopes to push back against this trend by soliciting current research on religious practices and traditions that highlight the connections linking religion and politics. How do theories of ethical subject-making help us to understand how religious subjects confront political projects? What other theoretical traditions might help to highlight how political and religious concerns interact without dissolving religion or religious practice as an object of study? How can concerns with race, gender, ethnicity, or class become more integrated into theories of ethics, morality, and religious subject-making?
In addition to research on religion broadly conceived, we are particularly interested in soliciting papers focused on the politics of ethics, religion at the margins of other domains of social life, marginal members of religious communities, religion and race/ethnicity, religion and gender, religion and class, religion and colonialism, religion and decolonization, or the religious formations of white supremacy.
We are soliciting abstracts for organized panels as well as individual papers, from graduate students, faculty, and scholars working outside the academy. Because this will be a virtual conference, we are especially interested in non-traditional formats for panels that will work well on a video conference platform. Registration costs will be announced at a later date, but they will be significantly reduced in comparison to other years, and we hope that this reduced fee and lack of travel will allow for scholars who cannot usually attend the SAR conference in person to participate.
Format:
Individual papers for 15-minute presentations can be submitted on their own. In addition, organized panels of various formats can also be submitted.
All panels will be 75 minutes long. For standard 15-minute presentations, this means 5 presentations per panel. However, other formats are welcome and can be indicated on the panel submission form. For roundtables, author-meets-critics panels, interviews, or other formats, paper titles and abstracts for participants are not required (but can be submitted if participants would prefer).
The conference will happen in several three-hour long blocks: US Central time 9am-noon (UTC 14:00-17:00); UC Central time 2pm-5pm (UTC 19:00-22:00); and US Central time 6pm-9pm (UTC 23:00-2:00).
How to submit abstracts:
If you are submitting an abstract for an individual paper (one that is not part of a panel), or if you are the organizer of a panel, abstracts can be submitted by using this google form.
If you are going to be a participant (but not an organizer) on a panel, please do not use the google form! Instead, send the information below to your panel organizer, who will input it when they submit the information for the panel as a whole.
Name
Email
Affiliation
Paper title (if it is a standard panel with 10- to 15-minute presentations)
Paper abstract (if it is a standard panel with 10- to 15-minute presentations)
Accessibility requests (optional, see below)
Rough timeline:
Last day to submit abstracts: February 15, 2021
Announcement of decisions about submissions: mid-March 2021
Registration opens: mid-March 2021
Conference schedule announced: early April 2021
Accessibility:
If an author of an individual paper or a panel organizer makes accommodations requests for themselves or any participants on a panel, the Accessibility & Meetings Coordinator (accessibility@americananthro.org) will reach out to you and help identify if current AAA accessibility protocols will meaningfully support your access needs and/or if additional accommodations are necessary and available. This will be done upon completion of the abstract submission form and prior to the review period. Participants are not required to disclose their disability (mobility, auditory, sight, sensory, etc.) or identity status (Disabled, Deaf, Autistic, Chronically Ill, Mentally Ill, etc.), but are welcome to do so if they believe this information will influence the later discussion surrounding their access needs and/or accommodation requests. Please note that participants will NOT be penalized in any way for indicating that they have access needs and/or accommodation requests related to providing a virtual presentation.
If panelists or authors of individual papers do not want to disclose accessibility needs at this time, there will be another opportunity when each participant registers for the conference that accommodations can be requested.
Download and share the official SAR Call for Papers Poster by clicking the image above, or following this link.
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) is pleased to announce its graduate student paper prize competition, which is aimed at encouraging emerging scholars to write compelling ethnographies on religion. This prize is intended to foster theoretically significant, ethnographically rich work by students at an early stage of their career.
The prize includes a cash award of $250 for the winning paper, which might be recommended for publication in Religion and Society. There will also be a $100 cash award for the runner up. SAR will continue its mentorship program that will pair select graduate student finalists with faculty mentors. Finalists will have an opportunity to meet with their mentor at the 2020 AAA meetings in St. Louis to gain valuable feedback on revising their papers for publication.
At the time of submission, authors must be graduate students in anthropology or a related field in a university anywhere in the world and must be a member of SAR. Finalists will be notified early in the fall semester and paired with a faculty mentor before the 2020 AAA meetings. Winners will be publicly announced at a special mentorship reception, where finalists will be invited to present their work with commentary from their mentors. Winners and finalists will also be recognized at the SAR business meeting.
Interested graduate students are invited to submit their previously unpublished, original and polished work to Courtney Handman (chandman@austin.utexas.edu) and Ana Mariella Bacigalupo (anab@buffalo.edu) by May 15, 2020. Papers must be written in English, and should be no more than 10,000 words inclusive of all notes, bibliography, figures, transcripts, and abstract. Please write “SAR Paper Prize Submission” in the subject line of the email. Limit of one submission per person.
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion A section of the American Anthropological Association announces the 2020 juried competition for the:
2020 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 2018 or later. 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 2020.
Submission guidelines
To receive additional information on how to submit a book for consideration, please contact jon.bialecki@gmail.com.
Photo taken of the luncheon for the 2018 SAR Student Paper Prize winners, November 17, 2018.
2018 Student Prize Meeting
The Department of Anthropology at San Jose State University kindly agreed to host this lunch for SAR.
Names clockwise starting from the left end of the table: Simon Coleman, Leanne Williams, Kalpesh Bhatt (finalist), Robert Weller, Mayfair Yang (mentor), Jane Saffitz (winner), Roberta Ricucci, Mara Leichtman (judge), Stacey Langewick (mentor), Khalidah Ali, Crystal Sheedy (runner up), Fred Klaits (mentor), and Tyler Zoanni (finalist).
Our host from the Department, Jay Ou, is standing in the back. We also thank the Head of the Department of Anthropology at San Jose State U, Roberto Gonzalez.
To find out more about the SAR Student Paper Prize, and the upcoming call for submission, click here.
