Dear SAR Community,
Welcome to the July 2025 edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter! As we ease into the latter half of summer, we wish you a restful, productive, and fulfilling remainder of the season. If you have any announcements or updates, you’d like included in the upcoming newsletter, feel free to send them my way.
Best,
Shahana Munazir
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, UW-Madison
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
July 27th, 2025
News and Announcements
SAR 2025 Biennial | Successful conclusion
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) 2025 Biennial Conference in Santa Barbara! We are grateful for the vibrant discussions, generous feedback, and collegial spirit that filled our presentations, panel discussions, and various workshop sessions. We look forward to continuing these conversations and building on the momentum as we move ahead. Looking forward, also to seeing many of you in the upcoming AAA meeting in New Orleans in November 2025.
Call for Submissions: SAR Graduate Student Paper Prize 2025
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion invites submissions for its Graduate Student Paper Prize, recognizing outstanding ethnographic writing on religion. The competition awards $250 to the winner and $100 to the runner-up, with the winning paper potentially recommended for publication in Religion and Society.
Finalists will be paired with faculty mentors through SAR’s mentorship program and honored at the 2025 AAA Meetings, where they will present their work and receive feedback.
Deadline: August 1, 2025
Eligibility: Graduate students in anthropology or related fields; SAR membership required
Submission: Email unpublished papers (max 30 double-spaced pages) to Britt Halvorson (bhalvors@colby.edu) and Cymene Howe (ach1@rice.edu) with subject line: SAR Paper Prize Submission.
New Books and Articles
Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore
July 2025
Nurhaizatul Jamil
University of Illinois Press
Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion
June 2025
Edited by Justine Bakker and David Kline
Fordham University Press
Islam: A New History from Muhammad to Present
May 2025
John Tolan
Princeton University Press
Circulations: Modernist Imaginaries of Colonialism and Decolonization in Papua New Guinea
May 2025
Courtney Handman
University of California Press
Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire
March 2025
Candace Lukasik
New York University Press
Life in Language: Mission Feminists and the Emergence of a New Protestant Subject.
March 2025
Ingie Hovland
The University of Chicago Press
Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong
February 2025
Micah F. Morton
University of Wisconsin Press
Death in a Foreign Land: Turkish Muslim Exiles and the Making of Theodicy
January 2025
Shively Kim
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
The Mormon Archive’s First Ten Thousand Years: Infrastructure, Materiality, Ontology, and Resurrection in Religious Transhumanism
January 2025
Jon Bialecki
Comparative Studies in History and Society, Cambridge University Press
Call for Proposals and Opportunities
The 2025 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, taking place November 19–23 in New Orleans, centers on the theme “Ghosts,” inviting anthropologists to explore how the past lingers and shapes the present, as well as the creative and immaterial aspects of human experience. This theme is highly relevant to members of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR), as it resonates with longstanding interests in spirits, ancestors, memory, ritual, and the ways religious communities engage with the unseen or spectral in everyday life. Early registration closes July 31! Register here
SAR is an active section of the AAA and regularly hosts sessions at the Annual Meeting, including panels, the Roy Rappaport Lecture, and award presentations such as the Clifford Geertz Prize and the graduate student paper prize.
Looking ahead, the AAR Annual Meeting in Boston is scheduled for November 22–25, 2025. This flagship event brings together thousands of religion scholars for panels, networking, and mentoring, and includes sessions from the Anthropology of Religion Unit. Registration for the Annual Meeting is yet to open.
Employment Opportunities
The Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University is hiring for a tenure-track position focused on Contemporary Islam in the Americas. Scholars from a range of disciplines, including Anthropology, are encouraged to apply.
For full details and application instructions, please visit: https://apply.interfolio.com/169330