Dear SAR Community,
Welcome to the September 2025 edition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Newsletter! If you have any announcements or updates, you’d like included in the upcoming newsletter, feel free to send them my way.
Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Section of the American Anthropological Association
September 28th, 2025
News and Announcements
- Heading to the AAA Annual Meetings in New Orleans this November?
Mark your calendars for the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Business Meeting!
Date & Time: Friday, November 21, 2025 | 7:30–9:30 PM
Location: Sheraton New Orleans, Rhythms III (2nd floor)
Our incoming SAR President, Prof. Amira Mittermaier (University of Toronto), will preside over the meeting. Highlights include:
- Presentation of the Clifford Geertz Book Prize (with two honorable mentions)
- Announcement of the Student Paper Prize
SAR T-shirts will also be available at a special discounted price of just $14 each. Choose from yellow or green, short-sleeve, 100% cotton (sizes S–XL).
Light finger foods and drinks will be provided, with a cash bar available for alcoholic beverages.
We look forward to seeing you there!
- New Editorial Team for the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion Series
We are pleased to share that the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion book series, published by Palgrave Macmillan, has a new editorial team. Sowparnika Balaswaminathan and David Kloos are joining Hillary Kaell as co-editors.
As the official book series of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, Contemporary Anthropology of Religion publishes ethnographically and theoretically rich works that explore religion across the globe. The series welcomes contributions on a wide range of themes, including lived religion, material religion, ritual, embodiment, social memory, ecology, gender, conflict and violence, politics, law and governance, globalization, technology, pluralism, and diversity.
Call for new submissions
The editors are currently inviting proposals for both monographs and edited volumes. The series encourages submissions from first-time authors as well as established scholars. For details on how to submit a proposal, please see the guidelines here.
For inquiries or to discuss your project, you may contact the editors directly: Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, Concordia University – sowparnika.nathan@concordia.ca; Hillary Kaell, McGill University – hillary.kaell@mcgill.ca ; David Kloos, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies – kloos@kitlv.nl
New Books and Articles
Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity: Theology, Politics, Ethics
Candace Lukasik and Sarah Riccardi-Swartz (ed)
November 2025 (forthcoming: available for pre-order)
Fordham University Press
“Faith, Culture and Tradition”: hearing the Penitentes of Santa Marta
Marcelo de Medeiros Reis Filho
August 2025
Checking the Fruit: Skepticism as Epistemic Politics in American Evangelicalism”
Sam Victor
August 2025
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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
Making Places Sacred: New Articulations of Place and Power
March 2025
Matt Tomlinson and Yujie Zhu
Cambridge University Press
Enchanted Modernities: Ancestral Vitalizations in the Upper Mekong
February 2025
Micah F. Morton
University of Wisconsin Press
Let the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia
January 2025
Andrew Singleton and Matt Tomlinson
Manchester University Press
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.
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.