Dear SAR Community,
Welcome to the latest edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter! As we move into March and gear up for the 2025 SAR Biennial Conference (June 21–23 at U.C. Santa Barbara), we have important announcements and deadlines to share: This year’s theme, Religiosities, Ecologies, and Environmentalisms in the Age of the Anthropocene, promises thought-provoking discussions and engaging scholarship. I look forward to seeing many of you there!
As always, if you have any announcements, please feel free to share them with me so I can include them in the newsletter.
Best,
Shahana Munazir
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, UW-Madison
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
16th March 2025
News and Announcements
SAR Biennial Conference June 2025
Dormitory Accommodations:
To help with lodging costs, affordable on-campus dormitory rooms are available at UCSB. Priority registration deadline: April 15, 2025. Register here
Workshops for Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars
We are hosting three workshops designed specifically for graduate students and early-career scholars. Each workshop has a capacity of up to 24 participants (on a first-come, first-served basis), and attendees are welcome to join more than one. Please use this link to sign up for any of these events after you have registered for the conference with AAA.
1. Graduate & Early-Career Scholar Workshops: Three specialized workshops will be offered at the conference, including sessions on grants and the job market, academic publishing, and engaging with popular media. Navigating Grants and the Job Market — Prof. Angie Heo (Univ. of Chicago) and Prof. Joe Blankholm (UC Santa Barbara)
2. Academic Publishing — Prof. Daromir Rudnyckyj (University of Victoria, B.C.) and Hillary Kaell (McGill Univ., editor of Contemporary Anthropology of Religion Book Series with Palgrave Macmillan Press)
3. Engaging with Popular Media and Publishing in Newspapers/Magazines — Prof. Hannah H. Gould (Univ. of Melbourne)
Registration Fees:
For SAR Members Early Bird Registration:
Non-Student/Professional – $160
Student – $60
International-based Professional (traveling from abroad); Contingent Employment – $30
For Non-SAR Members and Non-Early Bird SAR Members
Non-Student/Professional – $185
Student – $70
International-based Professional (traveling from abroad); Contingent Employment – $45
To join SAR or renew your membership, please go to the American Anthropological Association’s registration site and select SAR as one of your sections. (Note that membership in AAA is required to join SAR.)
Conference T-Shirts:
Conference T-shirts are thick 100% cotton, in two colors: Green and Yellow, Sizes S, M, L, and XL. They carry the logo of a humpback whale breaching out of the ocean, with a Channel Island on the horizon. All proceeds go to support SAR activities, including travel grants for financially needy attendees. $22 per shirt, pick up at Conference site. Purchase when you register for the SAR Biennial Conference:
Click here to purchase SAR Biennial Conference T-Shirt
New Books and Articles
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
Khidmat as Understanding: Muslim Women, Marriage, and Ethics of Care in Muslim Households
December 2024
Shahana Munazir
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal
Muslim Women in India: Challenging Boundaries, Negotiating Spaces
December 2024
Usha Sanyal and Nazima Parveen
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal
Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power
November 2024
Carola E. Lorea and Rosalind I.J. Hackett
Amsterdam University Press
To Each Their Own’: Destined Difference, (In)commensurability, and the Discursive Mediation of Christian Spiritual Warfare in Northwestern Madagascar
October 2024
Seth Palmer
Journal of Religion in Africa
Mirrors of the Past: Time and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Western Astrology
October 2024
Omri Elisha
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cambridge University Press
Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple
September 2024
Tracy Pintchman
Oxford University Press
Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience
May 2024
Matt Tomlinson
Punctum Books
Call for Proposals and Opportunities
The IUAES Commissions on the Anthropology of Religion, Visual Anthropology, Museums and Cultural Heritage, Medical Anthropology and Epidemiology, and the Anthropology of Pandemics are excited to announce the “Portraying Religion and Health Photo-Essay Award.” This is an opportunity to celebrate, through visual exploration, the intersections between religion and health. – Open to young scholars (University, College, Masters, and PhD students) – No fee required – First prize: a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 – four photo essays will be selected to participate in a Round Table (online) and a Photo Exhibition at the upcoming World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress 2025 at Antigua, Guatemala, November 3-8, 2025 (https://waunet.org/) (IUAES and WAU fees included) – selection of 12 photos for IUAES calendar 2026 – the four selected essays will also appear in the exhibition book (open access) with other series and photographs selected – The Photo Essay is accepted in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese – Deadline: March 29, 2025 Please find the full call here: https://waunet.org/iuaes/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Call-Portraying-Religion-and-Health.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawI_ZPVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHc74i2l2CtukQoue6ku3PTRz9ESOFk86AFt7CWOVf4Dp4N8EWpJKGdy1Jg_aem_ANjL3xR9J8QbauskrGf0-A
Invitation to submit a paper for a panel on lived religion in Africa
Inviting scholars to submit papers for a panel at the 2025 AAA meeting exploring the dynamic expressions of lived religion in Africa. This panel seeks to investigate how individuals and communities experience, interpret, and practice their faiths in diverse African and African diasporic contexts. We welcome contributions that engage with themes such as spirituality, rituals, social change, identity, and the intersection of religion with politics, language, economics, or culture. Papers employing innovative methodologies or offering new insights into underrepresented perspectives are especially encouraged. Please reach out to KD Thompson (kd.thompson@wisc.edu) by April 1st 2025
In the Shadow of Malcolm X: Islam and the Black Radical Tradition
A conference entitled In the Shadow of Malcolm X: Islam and the Black Radical Tradition, will take place at the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar Senegal, from May 19-21, 2025. The conference, which will mark the centennial of Malcolm X’s birth, will also explore the rich and storied intersections of Islam and the Black Radical Tradition.