Hello everyone,
Happy New Year! I know that we are approaching February already, but I hope that all of you have been having a great year; and if not, I hope that you have a good support system to help you breathe, take a break, rest, and persevere. I am really sorry for the late circulation of newsletter this month, but I am trying to spread the news—your news—to the broader SAR audience!
As always, we hope to include as many information germane to the anthropology of religion as we could, so please do not hesitate to contact me (febiramadhan2025@u.northwestern.edu) if you have anything to share! We will always look forward to including new books and articles, calls for papers, employment opportunities, awards and prizes, conferences and workshops, publishing opportunities, grant and fellowship opportunities, podcasts, public scholarships, and any other information that you can think of in SAR newsletter to come.
As always, keep up with the most recent SAR news and activities on our website, Facebook, and Twitter pages! You are certainly welcome to engage with these pages and accounts as well. If you are on Twitter and have something that you wouldd like to be retweeted (or you want us to tweet that information), just DM or mention @AnthroReligion. We are here to support any anthropological scholarship on religion from all the subdisciplines, so do not hesitate to reach out to us!
Thank you,
Febi R. Ramadhan
SAR Communication Liaison
PhD Candidate, Northwestern University
Society News: Call for Pitches
SAR is looking for original, creative pitches that approach religion in the form of an anthropology story, photo essay, graphic ethnography, or short sound or film piece. We welcome pitches on the politics and practices of religion, from the everyday life of unintended devotion or blasphemous offense to institutional orders of organizing intimacy or collective dissent in the name of tradition, moral virtue, faith, or spirituality. We are eager to learn what you have to share and how you communicate to a wide audience through an engaging, conversational style.
Email a 300-word pitch that outlines the story or argument of your piece, and a 50-word author bio to Sawyer French (email: smfrench@uchicago.edu) by May 1, 2023. If proposing a sound or film piece, include a short clip. If proposing a photo essay, include one or two images. If proposing a graphic ethnography piece, include examples of your cartoon or illustration work.
First drafts will be due by June 15, 2023 and will go through a developmental edit with the AN editor. Full anthropology stories or essays are 1,600-2,000 words. Photo essays comprise six-eight high resolution images and a 750-word introductory essay. Sound and film pieces should be no longer than 10 minutes in length. Final pieces will publish in the September or October 2023 issue of the print magazine and on the AN website.
New Books and Articles
Life with Durham Cathedral: A Laboratory of Community, Experience, and Building
Arran J. Calvert
Berghahn Books, 2023
The Art of Fate Calculation: Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng
Stephanie Homola
Berghahn Books, 2023
The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China
Guangtian Ha
Columbia University Press, 2022
From Festive Sacred to Festive Secular? Indigenous Religious Presence in Two Nigerian Festivals
Rosalind L. J. Hackett
Numen, 2022
Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women-Only Kickboxing
Jasmijn Rana
Berghahn Books, 2022
Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology
William C. Olsen and Thomas J. Csordas
Berghahn Books, 2022
Call for Proposal and Installation
Psalms in Stone: Christian Language and Imagery in Government Buildings
Nation-states convulse in our challenging times. Their ongoing relations with Christianity—and Christians—press us to study public memory and morality in the 21st century. These relations materialize when it comes to Christian language and imagery in government buildings, whether it be Psalm 72:8 etched into the Canadian Parliament’s Peace Tower, Psalm 127:1 inscribed in the British Parliament’s Central Lobby, or even a Christmas display erected in front of a government building. By what social, political and material processes do Christian language and imagery come to be in government buildings? What stories are told about Christian language and imagery in government buildings, and who does the telling? What can we learn about memory, morality and materiality from the Christian language and imagery being discussed? And how does all of the above enrich our understanding of how Christian nationhood occurs?
If you are interested, curious, or otherwise, please reach out via email to Patrick.Bondy@dal.ca
RFP on Enduring and Persistent Peoples
Grant amount: $1,500
Deadline: February 1, 2023