Dear SAR Community,
Happy conference month! Welcome to the latest edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter! I am sending out an edited version with some minor additions. Apologies for the confusion!
Looking ahead to the 2025 SAR Biennial Conference—taking place June 21–23 at U.C. Santa Barbara, we’re excited to share key updates and announcements. We look forward to gathering with many of you in Santa Barbara!
Best,
Shahana Munazir
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, UW-Madison
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
June 17th, 2025
News and Announcements
SAR 2025 Biennial
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Conference is happening this weekend, June 21–23, in beautiful Santa Barbara! We’re thrilled to welcome all our participants for what promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking gathering.
All important updates and notifications have been emailed to registered attendees. Please be sure to check your inbox. Wishing everyone a smooth journey, comfortable stay, and a productive conference weekend!
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Submission: Email unpublished papers (max 30 double-spaced pages) to Britt Halvorson (bhalvors@colby.edu) and Cymene Howe (ach1@rice.edu) with subject line: SAR Paper Prize Submission.
Clifford Geertz Prize
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion thanks all who submitted nominations for the 2025 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. This juried award honors an outstanding recent book that demonstrates innovation, theoretical engagement, and ethnographic richness in the anthropology of religion. Eligible books were required to be single- or co-authored (not edited volumes), published in 2023 or 2024, and focused primarily on religion. The submission deadline has now passed, and the prize will be awarded at the AAA Annual Meeting in November 2025. For any inquiries, please contact the committee chair, Elayne Oliphant, at elayne.oliphant@nyu.edu.
SAR Call for Pitches
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) column in Anthropology News invites short-form, public-facing essays (max 1600 words) inspired by fieldwork, media, or current events, accompanied by audio or visual elements. Accepted submissions will appear in 2025 issues centered around the themes Signal/Noise, Invisibility, and Fluidity. Anthropology News seeks vivid, story-driven writing that connects with a broad audience—think magazine-style narratives with anthropological depth. Interested contributors should send a 250-word pitch to Angie Heo at heo@uchicago.edu (subject line: “SAR Pitch 2025”). Pitches should include a clear story element and a link to the anthropological study of religion. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.
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
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. Registration opens on April 21st, 2025.
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.