American Academy of Religion

This session brings together editors from scholarly and trade presses, both large and small, to share their perspectives on the acquisition and editorial processes that bring a book from its research stage to market. Editors will share how scholarly authors can find their best publishing fit, what acquisition editors are looking for, strategies for pitching a book, and how to identify audience(s). They also discuss how they build strong relationships with authors in order for their books to make the most impact. Vincent Lloyd, Villanova University, Presiding Panelists: - Elisabeth Maselli, Rutgers University Press - Elaine Maisner, University of North Carolina Press - Philip Getz, Palgrave Macmillan - Rebecca Shillabeer, Routledge This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 25.

Have you been struggling to get proposals accepted to the AAR Annual Meeting? Come to this session to get some tips and ideas about how to better frame your research to increase your chances of acceptance. The presenter, Elissa Cutter, has been reviewing proposals as part of the Religion in Europe Unit since 2012. As a current chair of that unit, she now has several years of experience in reviewing proposals and forming sessions. In this session, she will let you know some of the main pitfalls that people fall into in writing their conference proposals and how best to avoid them. Panelist: Elissa Cutter, Georgian Court University This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 24.

Wade Clark Roof is the 2019 winner of the Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Having passed away suddenly on August 24, 2019, he will receive the award posthumously at this year's Marty Award Forum. Roof was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he founded and directed the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life. Trained as a sociologist of religion, and the author of fourteen books, he was widely known for his scholarship on the cultural, civic, and political effects of religious pluralism in the United States, and in particular on the spiritual lives of the baby boomer generation. Under his leadership, the Capps Center consistently brought together multiple publics—scholars, students, Santa Barbara residents, journalists, scientists, elected officials, and more—for extended conversations about key matters of common concern. The Marty Award recognizes Professor Roof’s many contributions as a public scholar, institution builder, and advocate for religious studies and the humanities. In this year’s Marty Award Forum, E.J. Dionne (University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University, W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and syndicated columnist for the Washington Post) will join Roof's former colleague Kathleen Moore (chair of the Religious Studies department at UCSB and interim director of the Capps Center) and two former students, Julie Ingersoll (University of North Florida) and J. Shawn Landres (Jumpstart Labs) for an extended public discussion of Roof’s life and work. Contributions from the audience will be welcomed as well. Erik Owens, Boston College, Presiding Panelists: - E.J. Dionne, Brookings Institute, Washington Post - Julie J. Ingersoll , University of North Florida - J. Shawn Landres , University of California, Los Angeles - Kathleen Moore, University of California, Santa Barbara This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 24.

This session celebrates the 50th Anniversary of James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power, published March 1, 1969. This panel features prominent thinkers who address the significance of Cone’s first book, the relevance of black theology and the legacy of the James Cone. Adam Clark , Xavier University, Presiding Panelists: - Eddie S. Glaude, Princeton University - Gary Dorrien, Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary - Eboni Marshall Turman, Yale University This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 24.

After Kate Bowler’s 2013 book, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, became an unexpected public hit, she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer at the age of 35. Kate was faced with the ironic situation of “being an expert on “health wealth and happiness while being ill.” Her 2018 memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, is a memoir exploring that existential irony, and the ways in the American belief that tragedy is a test of character shaped her own response to illness. Now a speaker in high demand, Kate will engage with AAR President Laurie Patton on her transformation. Their conversation will focus on what it has meant for Kate to become a public intellectual in the midst of being a scholar, teacher, mother, wife, and cancer survivor. In her own “expansion of the public sphere,” Kate has explored questions of divine will and justice in contexts far outside of academe. What has shifted in her understandings of the role of the scholar in the world? How has her own thinking about public life in America changed since she has started writing for and speaking to larger audiences? Do the questions Kate raises about the American prosperity gospel changed public discourse about illness, divine will, and tragedy? Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College, Presiding Panelists: Kate Bowler, Duke University This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 24.

A Blueprint for the Public Study of Religion. In addition to its traditional goal of fostering excellence in the academic study of religion, the AAR’s recently revised mission statement includes a new goal of enhancing the public study of religion. But what is the public study of religion? How might we collectively (and inevitably imperfectly) define it? This AAR address will offer a blueprint. I suggest that such a public study of religion involves a renewed curiosity about, and disciplined and ethical reflection on, four things: 1) the nature of our scholarly contexts; 2) the nature of our scholarly publics; 3) the nature of power and privilege in the study of religion; 4) the nature of labor in the study of religion. I will use theory in the study of religion, philosophy of the public sphere, and poetry to draw the blueprint. As a way of gesturing to another kind of collective that moves beyond the “magisterial voice of the single leader,” our time together will involve AAR voices other than my own. I end with an exhortation to a newly energetic and different kind of curiosity as fundamental to our work as public scholars. In her poem, “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe,” Elizabeth Alexander ends with a query: “. . . and are we not of interest to each other?” José I. Cabezón , University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding Panelists: Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.

Submissions by women to journals and books series, including JAAR, are lower by percentage than the percentage of women in the field of religious studies. This panel brings together women successful as editors and authors to discuss the reasons for this and offer advice and support to women in the field for their publishing agendas. Andrea Jain, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, Presiding Panelists: - Zayn Kassam, Pomona College - Elaine Maisner, University of North Carolina Press - Lisa Sideris, Indiana University - Catherine Wessinger, Loyola University, New Orleans This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.

Laurie L. Patton is 2019 President of the American Academy of Religion, President of Middlebury College, and a scholar of South Asian history and culture. Her forthcoming book, "Who Owns Religion? Scholars and Their Publics in the Late Twentieth Century" (University of Chicago, December 2019), examines the cultural work of the study of religion through a discussion of extreme cases—the controversies of the late 80s and 90s—where the work of scholars was passionately refuted and refused by the publics they describe. The emergence of the multicultural politics of recognition during this decade created the possibility of “eruptive” public spaces, which were magnified by the emergence of the Internet, a development that changed the nature of readership for all involved in producing scholarship. Patton’s incisive analysis of the six cases leads to a series of reflections on the status of public scholarship today, and the self-critical work that scholars should pursue as they engage in their work. The book will be essential reading for religious studies scholars. Mara Willard, Boston College, Presiding Panelists: - Leela Prasad, Duke University - Erik Owens, Boston College - Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara Responding: - Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.

The Teaching and Learning Committee facilitates an engaging, hands on workshop, helping participants build assignments that are creative, more plagiarism resistant, and, importantly, that also assess course outcomes. In this recorded workshop, participants identify the key components of a successful assignment; explore strategies for designing creative scaffolded and staged assignments; describe the purpose and features of a capstone project; discover how to effectively consider outcomes in assignment strategies; and demonstrate ways to buffer against plagiarism. Panelist: Amy Hale, Atlanta, GA This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.

The American Academy of Religion presents its annual Journalism Award to recognize outstanding contributions to religion reporting in the previous year. This session celebrates journalistic excellence as it relates to the public understanding of religion, drawing insights from previous awardees, members of the award jury, and partners from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Panelists will discuss partnerships and opportunities to advance the public understanding of religion amidst the changing media landscape and the different challenges faced by broadcast and print journalism. The discussion will engage the biggest religion news stories and religion topics of 2018. The 2019 recipients—Ian Johnson and Dawn Araujo-Hawkins—will be honored in absentia. Joshua McElwee, third place winner, is the Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter who often travels as part of the papal press pool. His articles covered some of the hottest topics of 2018 including Bishops' prosecutions may point to new phase in church's sex abuse crisis, Irish sex abuse survivors say Francis should admit to Vatican's cover-up, and Wuerl resigns, ending influential tenure in wake of abuse report. Evan Berry, Arizona State University, Presiding Panelists: - Joshua McElwee, National Catholic Reporter - Liz Kineke, Broadcast Journalist - Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times - Shirley Abraham, Documentary Filmmaker - Jon Sawyer, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting - Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University This session was recorded at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, California, on November 23.