In Memoriam: Professor Gary Bouma, MDiv, MA, PhD, AM (1942-2021)

Dear Colleagues:
We are saddened by the news that Gary Bouma died at his home in Melbourne last Thursday morning, 19 August, in the company of his wife, Patricia. He was 79. After falling and breaking his leg in February, when he was otherwise fit and well, Gary experienced a number of debilitating medical conditions and, in the midst of all that, the death of his beloved son.

Gary was a long-time participant in international sociology and a leader in the sociology of religion in Australia.  His massive academic legacy includes over 30 books and 360 articles—with many still forthcoming. His most recent book, authored by Andrew Singleton, Anna Halafoff, Mary Lou Rasmussen and Gary, on Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity, arising from an ARC Discovery Project, was published in April this year. As well as landmark works on the sociology of Australian religion, including Australian Soul, he reshaped Australian understanding of religion in numerous areas including interreligious understanding, human rights, religion and youth, education and public policy. His work reached far beyond the academy, with notable policy work including the Human Rights Commission’s 2011 inquiry into Freedom of Religion and Belief in 21st Century Australia; chairing the Board of Directors for The Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2009; and numerous interventions in public debate in areas such as religious diversity, gender and sexuality, Islamophobia and the place of religion in schools.

Gary came to Australia in 1979, joining Monash University, where he remained for the next 42 years, becoming Emeritus Professor in 2008, after serving in numerous roles including Professor of Sociology, DVC Research, and Head of School. In 2005, he was appointed UNESCO Chair in Inter-Cultural and Inter-Religious Relations. He led the Australian node of the University of Ottawa-based Religion and Diversity Project, and was a leading figure in other distinguished national and international research collaborations. In 2013, he was awarded AM for services to Sociology, to interreligious relations and to the Anglican Church of Australia.

He was also an ordained minister in the Anglican church and at the time of his death was Honorary Assistant Priest at St Johns, East Malvern.

Gary’s funeral will be on Thursday, 26 August at 11:00 am AEST (that is 9:00 pm Wednesday, 25 August US EST) and will be live-streamed. The State of Victoria’s COVID regulations currently restrict the number of people attending funerals to ten, plus those required for the conduct of the funeral.  The link to the funeral is https://www.selwynallenfunerals.com.au/upcoming-services . Scroll down to find Gary.

New Podcast: “Religion Unmuted”

NEW PODCAST “RELIGION UNMUTED” FROM THE RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE PROGRAM @ RICE UNIVERSITY

The Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) at Rice University, directed by Prof. Elaine Howard Ecklund, has launched a new podcast! RELIGION UNMUTED is the podcast that brings women’s voices to the table. We explore how religion impacts public discourse around important social issues, like racism, politics, immigration, health, and the body. Join us for research-driven dialogue that amplifies women’s voices in conversation about religion and public life. Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen; all episodes are available here: https://religionunmuted.libsyn.com/ .

News from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Religion

  • JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS
  • UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL
  • REMINDER: 2021 ASA ANNUAL MEETING & RELIGION SECTION DAY
  • GRADUATE STUDENT MENTORING – STAY TUNED
  • NEWSLETTER & @ASA_RELIGION TWITTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS – UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA at CHAPEL HILL

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – ASA Job ID 16552

  • The Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is pleased to participate in the following search for a tenure-track assistant professor:
  • Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/184289
  • Please pass these links along to potential candidates; thank you! For questions about the search, please email Jennifer Eissing, Department of Sociology, at: eissingj@email.unc.edu
  • Applications will be considered until the position is filled, but our review of applications will begin on November 9, 2020.

Postdoc – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – ASA Job ID 16557

  • The Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is pleased to participate in the following search for a postdoctoral research fellow:
  • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity: https://research.unc.edu/carolina-postdocs/applicants/
  • Please pass these links along to potential candidates; thank you! For questions about the search, please email Jennifer Eissing, Department of Sociology, at: eissingj@email.unc.edu
  • Deadline for submission is November 16, 2020.
  • *Note: We welcome more job announcements. Per ASA policy, academic jobs advertised through our listserv include ASA job bank ID.

REMINDER: 2021 ASA ANNUAL MEETING & RELIGION SECTION DAY

Plans for the 116th ASA Annual Meeting in Chicago, August 7-10, 2021 continue. Note that ASA’s online portal will open for submissions on Monday, November 9, 2020. The submission deadline is Wednesday, February 3, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

Sociology of Religion Section Sessions are assigned to Day 4, Tuesday, August 10th. Since this is the last day of the meeting, our section receives an additional session for papers.

The section’s Program Committee consists of colleagues with an array of expertise. In hopes of adequately diversifying the scholarship featured this year, we are issuing an OPEN call for all Religion Section sessions and roundtables, while asking that session organizers for each of our sessions pay particular attention to themes which I believe are of particular significance to the study of religion today as follows:

  • Session: Sociology of Religion OPEN (preference for papers on gender & sexuality) Session
    Organizers: Jonathan Coley and Courtney Irby
  • Session: Sociology of Religion OPEN (preference for papers on cross-national or international dynamics)
    Session Organizers: Gary Adler and Rachel Rinaldo
  • Session: Sociology of Religion OPEN (preference for papers on the State or power dynamics)
    Session Organizer: Meredith Whitnah and Rhys Williams
  • Session: Sociology of Religion OPEN (preference for papers on non-religious dynamics or nones)
    Session Organizers: Joseph Blankholm and Jacqui Frost
  • Refereed Roundtables: Sociology of Religion Roundtables OPEN
    Session Organizers: Orestes Pat Hastings and Laura Krull

Our annual Sociology of Religion Section Business Meeting will convene immediately after the Roundtable Session.

Also, the Religion Section anticipates partnering again with the concurrent meetings of the Association for the Sociology of Religion also in Chicago. For example, we plan to again co-host a joint mentoring session for graduate students as well as a joint evening reception. More details as they are available.

GRADUATE STUDENT MENTORING – STAY TUNED

Our ASA Sociology of Religion Section is making plans to offer opportunities for Graduate Student Mentoring in the coming year. Stay tuned for details as they emerge.

NEWSLETTER & ASA RELIGION TWITTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you have newsletter items – Announcements, Awards, Promotions, Publications, Calls for Submissions, Job Listings (with ASA Job Bank ID), and other relevant material, please email Evan Stewart at Evan.Stewart@umb.edu.

If you have anything you would like to share in future announcement emails, please email me – gemarti@davidson.edu.

Gerardo Martí, PhD
L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology, Davidson College
https://www.davidson.edu/people/gerardo-marti

the ICSOR GRANT 2020 winner

Immagine incorporata 1

Caro collega,
il vincitore dell’ICSOR GRANT 2020 è il professor Robert Woodberry, Baylor University, USA. Il tema di ricerca è “Religione e cambiamento sociale in due secoli: Mappatura delle attività della Chiesa cattolica dai documenti dell’Archivio Apostolico Vaticano & Propaganda Fide”.
La qualità delle domande è stata elevata e la selezione molto difficile.

Cordiali saluti.
Ciao. 
Roberto Cipriani


Dear Colleague,

The ICSOR GRANT 2020 winner is Professor Robert Woodberry, Baylor University, USA. The research topic is ” Religion and Social Change over Two Centuries: Mapping the Activities of the Catholic Church from Documents in the Vatican Apostolic & Propaganda Fide Archives”.  The quality of applications has been high and the selection very difficult.

Best regards.
Ciao.
Roberto Cipriani

Postponement of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology to February 2021

As you have been informed recently, the Executive Committee of the ISA decided to postpone the IV ISA Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to February 23-27, 2021

We are aware that this postponement may be problematic for many of you. The size and speed of the Covid-19 outbreak gave us no other solution. We will redouble our energy and motivation to use these seven months delay to make this Forum a major and insightful meeting of the global sociological community in extraordinary times.

All the activities that have been prepared for the Forum will be maintained. This includes the regular session as much as the plenaries and the common sessions. We will however provide some flexibility to the RC that would like to adapt their program and, if they decide so, to allow their participants to update the title and abstracts of their contribution to the Forum. The abstract selected for the Forum in July 2020 remain thus valid for the Forum in February 2021.

Together with a new “early registration deadline”, we have set a new calendar that allows some flexibility to RCs that wish to update and re-open some of their panels to new participants to replace the colleagues who will not be able to join us in February and to take into account the questions and challenges raised by the Covid-19 outbreak, its social impact and the world that will come out of it.

15 September – 15 October 2020

  • The authors of abstracts selected for the ISA Forum will be invited to confirm their participation to the Forum before October 15th, 2020. They may update their abstract and title, in consultation with their session organizers or RC program coordinators.

15 October 2020 Final day to confirm participation by authors of the already accepted abstracts.

  • The abstracts that have not been not confirmed will be automatically removed from the program

16 – 25 October 2020 Publication of the calls for new abstracts proposals by the RC/WG/TG

26 October – 12 November 2020 Submission of new abstracts proposals via online platform

12 November 2020 Deadline for new abstract submissions

24 November 2020 Authors are notified about the acceptance or rejection of their abstracts
15 December2020 Presenters final registration deadline (early registration fees apply).

We are aware that postposing the Forum will require additional work for our RC program coordinators, presidents and boards, for the Local Organizing Committee and in particular for its president Hermilio Santos, and for the ISA Secretariat. We would like to thank each of them and ensure them we will be there to support them. On our side, have no doubt that we will use this delay to make this Forum an insightful space, to reinforce the existing panels and projects and to set up new ones, such as the “Sociological Movies section” for which a call will soon be published.

The CoVid outbreak is shaking our world in a way that no one expected and will have deep consequences on our world and the way we see it. The 2021 ISA Forum of Sociology will be a unique opportunity to learning from colleagues from all continents and sharing analyses of the crisis, its social impacts and the world that will emerge out of it with. We look very much forward to seeing all of you.

Sari Hanafi, President of the International Sociological Association

Geoffrey Pleyers, ISA Vice President for Research and President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology

Association for the Sociology of Religion 2020 Conference Cancelled

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 ASR Annual Meeting in San Francisco has been cancelled. There remains great uncertainty around whether this global health crisis will be resolved by August. Some experts are predicting social distancing orders will last at least through the summer.  The American Sociological Association has cancelled its SF conference, and we do, too.

This news is very disappointing. Every year, we look forward to intellectually stimulating research and conversation, sharing teaching experiences, and navigating grant opportunities. I want to express my sincere gratitude to our current President, James Cavendish, and our Program Chair, Brian Starks, who have already put a lot of work into creating a conference theme, proposing joint sessions with the ASA, soliciting session proposals and abstract submissions, and fielding questions about the Annual Meeting. I also appreciate the time and effort that ASR’s Council has dedicated to helping us plan this conference.

If you already registered for this conference, we will be happy to refund your money in full. We would also be happy to accept your payment as a generous donation to the ASR. If you would like a refund for your registration fee, please email me.

Please stay safe and healthy, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.  

Sincerely,

Rachel Kraus, PhD, MPA
ASR Executive Officer
Professor of Sociology
Ball State University

RC22 Newsletter #21 posted on the Research Committee website

The ISA’s Research Committee on the Sociology of Religion has posted its latest newsletter on the RC website.  It contains a report and photos from the RC22 Mid-Term Conference in Accra, Ghana, a report from the pre-conference workshop on research design, notice about the deadlines for the July 2020 ISA Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and other news.

image

Download it at http://www.isa-rc22.org/Newsletters/RC22_Newsletter_21_Dec_19.pdf

Notices from the Australian Association for the Study of Religion

Call for Papers:
Conferences

  • International Conference on Religious Tourism (ICRT), University of Punjab, Lahore Pakistan, 8-9 January 2020. Abstract deadline: 11 November 2019. More info.
  • “Mosques, power and politics”, Copenhagen, Denmark, 22-24 January 2020. Abstract deadline: 15 November 2019. More info.
  • The 25th Nordic Conference in the Sociology of Religion. 17-19 August 2020, Gothenburg, Sweden on ‘Religious Organisation(s): Challenges and changes in contemporary society’. Session proposal deadline: 15 November 2019. More info.
  • British Muslim Charitable Organisations: A Best Practice Forum, Birmingham, 15 January 2020. Abstract deadline: 22 November 2019. More info.
  • Rethinking​ ​Media, Religion and Secularities. Conference of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture Conference location: Sigtuna Foundation, Sigtuna, Sweden. Conference dates: 4-7 of August 2020. Deadline for Paper proposals: 6 December 2019. More info.
  • International Communication Association Preconference on Intersectional Imaginaries in Media, Religion & Gender, Gold Coast, Australia, May 2020. Proposal deadline 15 December 2019. More info.
  • The XXII Quinquennial World Congress of the IAHR, hosted by the New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions, will take place at the University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand from 23-29 August 2020. Submission deadline 31 December 2019. More info.
  • Navigating the non/confessional in university Islamic studies. University of Birmingham. 20-22 April 2020. Submission deadline 17 January 2020. More info.

  Publications

  • Call for Papers on Digital Visibilities of the Religious. Deadline 15 January 2020. More info.
  • Call for papers on Religion & Ecology for a special issue of Religions. Deadline 31 May 2020.

Postgrad/ECR Opportunities

Also if you’re on Facebook, we have a postgrad page so do join us 🙂

New Publications
Oosterbaan, M., van de Kamp, L. and Bahia, J. (2019), Global Trajectories of Brazilian Religion: Lusospheres, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Date and Location for SocRel 2020 conference

Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to circulate the date, location and list of speakers for the next Socrel Annual Conference

Celebrating SocRel at 45: Beyond Binaries in the Sociology of Religion
14 July – 16 July 2020
University of York

Keynote Speakers:

  • Dr Sarah Jane Page (Aston University)
  • Professor Sam Perry (University of Oklahoma)
  • Further speaker TBC

Special 45th Anniversary Panel:

  • Professor Eileen Barker (London School of Economics)
  • Professor Jim Beckford (Warwick University)
  • Professor Grace Davie (Exeter University)
  • Professor Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University)

A full call for papers including conference theme, abstract submission and registration links as well as further conference information will be circulated in the next few weeks. But in the meantime, please do pop this date in your diaries and we look forward to seeing you in York next year!

Should you have any questions or queries, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes,
Rachael  (Socrel conference and events officer)
Dr Rachael Shillitoe
Research Associate
School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT

ICSOR Newsletter Posted

The recent Newsletter of the International Center for the Sociology of Religion has been posted on the organization’s website.  http://www.icsor.it/

Available in both English and Italian, the newsletter contains information about:

  • The ECSOR International Grant Program for 2020
  • An announcement about the School for Advanced Training in the Sociology of Religion (SAFSOR), which will be held later this autumn.
  • Two scholarships available to young researchers at the Summer School on Religions in San Cimignano.
  • Reports on this year’s grant program and last year’s SAFSOR.
  • Much other information.