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Cara Burnidge For the past month, I've been thinking about American religion in the world. Following RAAC 2017, I drove to College Park, Maryland for three weeks of research at the National Archives at College Park (or, Archives II).  Every other year, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations meets in D.C. and many members (myself included) use these D.C. years to do research. Two birds, one travel expense stone. Building off of Lauren's fantastic review of this year's SHAFR meeting and Mike's Know Your Archives: NARA edition , I'd like to give everyone a few more tips for researching at Archives II in College Park (where State Department records are held) and share some very important news for any colleagues working on the World War I era.   First, who should consider researching at A2 or writing about religion in US  foreign relations? Anyone who's research interests intersect with the US government's actions abroad. As I wrote in Religi...

Lauren Turek This past weekend, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations celebrated its fiftieth anniversary (as well as the fortieth anniversary of the journal Diplomatic History ) at its annual meeting in Arlington, VA. Just as I reported  last year , the conference included a number of panels and roundtable discussions on the topic of religion in American history and foreign relations. There were, in fact, so many good panels on religion that I could not even attend all of them owing to my unfortunate inability to be in multiple places at once! As such, in addition to providing my own overview of the exciting work that scholars showcased at the SHAFR meeting this year, I have included some reflections from other attendees as well. Most of the panels that I attended reflected in some way on missionaries and missionary work, though the listing of panels that I have included at the end of this post does make clear that there were many panels at the conference that...

Andrea L. Turpin “It takes a village to nurture a book into being, and I have been privileged to be part of one that stretches from coast to coast.” This is the opening sentence of my book's acknowledgments section, and I thought of it recently when a Baylor history colleague solicited archive stories to share with her graduate class on archival research (wish I’d had one of those!). The stories that jumped to my mind related to creative ways to fund archival visits and maximize time there—which for me very much depended on a network of friends and supporters. As it happens, I write this from Philadelphia, where I am spending two weeks at the archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society researching for my next book project . Stay tuned next month for my “Know Your Archives” post on this excellent resource for American religious history. In the meantime, here’s an adapted version of the tales and tips that I passed along to our graduate students on how I conducted my dissertati...

By Karen Johnson. I am thrilled to announce that the Newberry Library in Chicago is hosting a seminar on Religion and Culture in the Americas this year.  If you're working on a project and would like feedback, please apply.  You'll have the opportunity to share your ideas, to receive formal feedback, and to hear comments from attendees.  The deadline for a proposal is soon: June 30 !  I have found the Newberry's seminars (the library hosts a wide range of groups) to be incredibly helpful, both for learning what others are doing in a deep and sustained manner, and for receiving feedback on my own work.  Read on for the the official description: The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture broadly and from interdisciplinary perspectives including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. We are interested in how religious beli...

Janine Giordano Drake Is there such a thing as working-class religion?  In his recent book,  The Making of Working Class Religion, Matthew Pehl argues that there is such a thing. For Pehl, "worker religion," is a pattern of idioms and symbols that are co-constituted in the workplace and in religious communities. When we assess working people's religious experiences through the category of "working class religion" (rather than "faith" or "belief," which differ by tradition), we come to see the ways that Catholics, Protestants and Jewish workers had common experiences which informed their religious identities. That is, Pehl argues, workers experienced class through their religion, and religion through their class. The one category cannot be understood without recognizing the way the other category helped constitute it. How does this theory impact the way we read the history of the working classes in Detroit? According to Pehl, it was partially ...

Adam Park "Why so serious?"--The Joker With tongue perpetually in cheek, admittedly, I get a little nervous when people get "serious." My skittish ears are therefore perked at the very mention of the s-word. In all its stern demand, the s-word happened a lot this weekend at my favorite conference ever--the Religion & American Culture Conference. And, not incidentally, the s-word happens a lot in Religious Studies. "Taking religion seriously," so it goes. As Michael Altman Twittered (sp.?) the first morning of the conference: "what does it mean 'to take X seriously'? I've heard a lot of that this morning." I second that Twitter query. Though testing my incessantly satirical nerves, I think it worthwhile to explore the nature of our cultivated tone, our asserted imperative, our assumed position, our seriousness.  Here's what I think is going on. As Charlie McCrary suggested in his previous post, "taking religion seriously...

Cara Burnidge Now that RAAC2017 has come and gone,* summer is in full swing. For me, and I suspect many readers too, that means it's time for archival research. Fortunately, we've accumulated a quite a few posts for those who might be researching for the first time or heading somewhere new. Here's a round-up of what we've posted previously. Guy Aiken, American Friends Service Committee , Philadelpha John Turner, LDS Church History Library follow-up by Tom Simpson Michael Graziano, National Archives, College Park, Maryland  David Komline, Moravian Archives , Bethlehem, Pennsylvania  Jonathan de Hertog, American Antiquarian Society Michael Pasquier, American Catholic Archives with reference to... University of Notre Dame Archives Archdiocese of New Orleans Archdiocese of Baltimore American Catholic Research Center Cushwa Center, & more! Monica Mercado, Archdiocese of New York  Matt Sutton, evangelical/fundamentalist greatest hits tour Moody Bible Institute Biola Un...