Dear SAR Community,
Welcome to the December 2025 edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter. As we bring 2025 to a close, we wish all our members a restful, joyful, and restorative holiday season! As we look ahead to the new year, if you have announcements or updates you would like included in the January 2026 issue, please feel free to send them my way.
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
December 15th, 2025
News and Announcements
SAR Business Meeting at New Orleans AAA and Announcement of Winners
Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Business Meeting held at the American Anthropological Association Meeting in New Orleans on November 21, 2025.
The highlight of the Business Meeting was the announcement of the winners of the Geertz Prize and Student Paper Prize. This year’s winner of the Geertz Prize is Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press) by Emrah Yildiz. Honorable Mentions went to Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanian Pentecostalism (Stanford University Press) by Nathaneal Homewood and Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran (Indiana University Press) by Amina Tawasil.
This year’s winner of the Student Paper Prize was Dylan Renca (Boston University) for his paper “The Trouble of Nonhuman Beings: Virtue, Relationality and Power on Java in a Time of Islamic Revival.” The honorable mention went to Thomas Long (University of Manchester) for his paper “Black Churches, White Divisions: Race, Theology and the Debate over Critical Race Theory Amongst Baptists in Texas.”
Congratulations to all the awardees, and many thanks to the committee members for their hard work! At the Business Meeting our new SAR mentorship program was also announced – more on that soon. If you are interested in joining the mentorship program, please contact Hannah Howard at hghoward@bu.edu.
Happy holidays and have a wonderful break!
New Books and Articles
The Allure of Heavenly Mother, from South Korea to South Africa: Epistemological Authority at the World Mission Society Church of God
Douglas Bafford
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 29(2):81-103
Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity: Theology, Politics, Ethics
Candace Lukasik and Sarah Riccardi-Swartz (ed)
November 2025 (forthcoming: available for pre-order)
Fordham University Press
Healing Ableism: Stories About Disability and Religious Life
Darla Schumm
November 2025
Rutgers University Press
Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern, and Mediations of Gender
Raka Shome
November 2025
Duke University Press
Let the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia
January 2025
Andrew Singleton and Matt Tomlinson
Manchester University Press
Making Places Sacred: New Articulations of Place and Power
March 2025
Matt Tomlinson and Yujie Zhu
Cambridge University Press
Call for Proposals and Opportunities
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announces the launch of its inaugural Graduate Internships on the Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future program, made possible through generous support from the Templeton Religion Trust. The program offers summer 2026 professional opportunities for innovative PhD students in the humanities and social sciences whose dissertation research engages the study of religion. It also aims to foster institutional partnerships that cultivate a new generation of scholars equipped to understand and engage the evolving religious landscape in the United States. More details.