mortiz053

The University of Chicago Divinity School seeks to make an appointment in Religions in the Americas , effective July 1, 2018.  Rank and salary are open.  Junior candidates are particularly encouraged to apply. Religions in the Americas is an interdisciplinary area of graduate study that investigates religious ideas, practices, institutions, and movements in North and South America. The area brings together faculty and students with historical, sociological, ethnographic, literary, legal, demographic, comparative, and theoretical interests in religions in the Americas. 

The candidate for this position must hold the Ph.D. by the time of the appointment, and must be qualified to teach and to direct research in religious history broadly construed. Area of specialization, both in terms of religious traditions or movements, chronological periods, and disciplinary focus, is open. A coherent and creative agenda for research and publication, and a capacity for intellectual leader...

2016-2017 Young Scholars of American Religion co-hort: Elizabeth Jemison, Emily Suzanne Clark, Leigh Schmidt, Brett Grainger, M. Cooper Harriss, Rachel Gross, Brandon Bayne, Justine Howe, Cara Burnidge, Dan Vaca, & Kathryn Lofton [Not pictured: Nicole Meyers Turner] Cara Burnidge This past weekend the 2016-2017 Young Scholars of American Religion cohort completed its final meeting in Indianapolis. I don't know what to say about what our twice a year meetings have meant to me and, simultaneously, I have so to share that I don't know where to begin. I suppose in some respects Young Scholars needs no introduction. If you consider yourself a scholar or student of religion in America, then you probably have engaged with former young scholars in person or through their scholarship.  The Young Scholars celebrated its 25th year recently with a lovely reflection from Laurie Maffly-Kipp who has been both a Young Scholar and a Mentor. She wrote, The beauty of YSAR is that it has al...

Andrea L. Turpin I am looking forward to the annual conference of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH) this coming weekend, October 26-29, 2017, at the Dallas/Plano Marriott at Legacy Town Center! (This Baylor professor got lucky with travel this year.) One of the striking things about the program is how many papers related to American religion it contains. Indeed, this blog is exceptionally well represented. I am presenting, as are four fellow bloggers: Pete Cajka, Elesha Coffman, Lauren Turek, and blogmeister Cara Burnidge. Literally every time slot of panels save the very last one (which meets at 10am Sunday morning) has at least one paper on U.S. religious history--and more than one time slot has two entire panels on U.S. religion meeting simultaneously. There's a good mix of full panels on religious history and individual papers relating religion to a panel dedicated to a different main topic. Another encouraging sign of the vitality of the field is that the re...

Today's guest post comes from Catherine R. Osborne (a former postdoctoral fellow at the Cushwa Center).  Catherine is now Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University.  She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming second edition of American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader (NYU, 2017), the subject of today's post.  Thanks, Catherine! Over a decade ago, I was working at the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University ( https://www.fordham.edu/cs/ ) when its then co-director, Mark Massa, SJ, asked me if I wanted to participate in his newest project: assembling a one-volume primary source reader for students taking courses in American Catholicism. Drawing on our own research and on the work of earlier anthologists, especially John Tracy Ellis's Documents of American Catholic History and the fabulous nine-volume Orbis series American Catholic Identities: A Documentary History ...

Elesha Coffman image credit here Last week I spent a fantastic, albeit smoky, few days out at Berkeley at a workshop on "Ecumenical Protestantism and Post-Protestant Secularism in the United States," convened by David Hollinger. The elegiac song I've used in my title was inescapable. How does one define ecumenical/liberal/mainline Protestantism? "Something here inside / Cannot be denied." What has happened to it over the past century? "When a lovely flame dies / Smoke gets in your eyes." But wait--is the topic really as nebulous, and the outlook as grim, as that? Not at all! Well, maybe. It depends on what you're talking about. But scholars are talking about this, and a case can even be made that the center of gravity in the study of American Protestantism is shifting from evangelicalism and fundamentalism toward ecumenical Protestantism and post-Protestant secularism. The " mainline moment " continues! I can't even try to summarize...

Duke University Divinity School is seeking a Director for the Office of Black Church Studies, effective July 1, 2018.  The position is for a regular-rank member of the Divinity School faculty with the possibility of tenure at the associate or full professor level, who will teach in residential and hybrid programs, two courses engaging the intersection of Black Church Studies with at least one other scholarly field related to one of the academic divisions of the Divinity School (biblical, historical, theological, ministerial).  The central responsibility of the director of the Office of Black Church Studies (OBCS) is to provide intellectual and strategic leadership by guiding the overarching planning and program development of the Office, supporting student formation, organizing events and lectures, partnering with the Center for Reconciliation on visioning and collaborative projects, and fostering and strengthening community relations and connections with the w...

  Today's guest post continues our Know Your Archives series in which contributors and readers submit essays about archives of interest to those researching religion in American history. Today's guest post takes us to Cordova, Tennessee and the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.   William Black At the fall 1854 meeting of Indiana Presbytery, the Cumberland Presbyterian minister Thomas B. McCormick proclaimed he was “connected with the underground railroad” and did “not care who knows it.” He had helped more than thirty enslaved people escape from Kentucky, several of whom had been the property of another Cumberland Presbyterian minister. Minutes of Indiana Presbytery (Cumberland Presbyterian) I knew what happened next from newspaper accounts: Indiana Presbytery suspended McCormick from the ministry; a grand jury in Kentucky indicted him; the governor of Indiana agreed to let him be extradited; he fled...

Alongside the AAR/SBL this year in Boston, NAASR will host its third annual job market workshop . This is a great opportunity for early career scholars to receive feedback on their application materials from senior scholars with experience navigating the job market. This year we've split the workshop into two sessions: a workshop (for small group feedback on application materials) and a general Q&A. You are welcome to attend either session for as long as your schedule allows. For more information, please see below. If you're interested in registering for this no-cost workshop, please e-mail me (grazmike [at] gmail [dot] com) by October 15. NAASR Job Market Workshop  This session proposes to explore the employment challenges facing early career scholars through both a discussion and workshop. This session addresses issues important to junior academics (notably, but not exclusively, ABDs now entering/about to enter the job market) by demonstrating how a professional organizat...

Friday and Saturday, March 23-24, 2018 Saint Francis University Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940 (Click here for a PDF of the CFP) This conference is a celebration of the Liberal Arts. It brings together traditional research presentations, an art show/open mic, and an Ethics Bowl. To this end, we cordially invite undergraduates to submit original work of any medium on topics related to the Liberal Arts. Types of submissions may include: Academic essays tailored for a 15-20 minute oral presentation; Poster presentation or similar visual representations of research; Artwork such as poetry, music, paintings, sculptors, film, photography, drama, etc.; An Ethics Bowl team of 3-5 undergraduates—a single school may field multiple teams; Individuals may participate in multiple or all of these categories. While proposals might address any appropriate topic, priority will be given to those related to this year’s theme, “ Creation and Destruction .” What do we mean by the categories of “creation” an...

This post offers a very brief preview of a volume of essays on post-restoration Jesuits edited by Stephen Schloesser and Kyle Roberts of Loyola University and published with Brill. As readers of this blog are well aware, the Jesuits were “restored” in 1814 by Pope Pius VII after being suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. The men who remained in the order went underground for over forty years. Historians have noted that the Society of Jesus that emerged from that crucible held a deep aversion towards liberalism and nationalism. Yet, for this reason and others, the essays in Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religion and American Experience make the case that a study of post-Restoration Jesuits (1814-1965) can provide historians a useful lens for studying American modernity. Post-Restoration Jesuits inhabited a tension: they were loyal to the papacy and fierce critics of nationalism, yet they respected the separation of Church and State and built a range of institution...