Challenges and Futures in Religious Studies

#naasr2026

IAHR Regional Conference

In 1995, our journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion devoted a special issue to “pathologies” in study of religion in North American universities. The guest editor—Gary Lease—wrote words that are as applicable today as they were then. Given widespread budget cuts, “Scarcely a month goes by that one does not hear of a department or programme in the study of religions closing or being mutilated.”

One of the main pathologies Lease identified was the inability of scholars to distinguish religious practice from the study of religion. The pathologies we face today, by contrast, have less to do with distinguishing theology from religion than the infrastructural changes taking place across higher education as a whole.

Today scholars of religion in North America face a panoply of challenges:

• a caricature of the humanities and social sciences as useless at best, or a radical threat to traditional social norms at worst;
• an increasingly transactional view of education, according to which the only relevant goal of a college education is job training;
• the rise of LLMs, which has required a complete rethinking of our pedagogical goals and methods;
• a declining focus with students on sustained reading and reading comprehension in general;
• a neoliberal overhaul of university management and budgets, requiring departments to meet metrics that gauge efficiency above all other measures;
• and more.

Inasmuch as our analytical commitments ask us to examine the structural workings of power, we are in the intellectual position to explore authoritative systems not only in terms of their machinations and effects but also in terms of social responses and resistances to the same.

We are also well served to remember that academia and the work we do inside it are ever-evolving phenomena even in contexts of relative comfort and stability. This reminder helps us think and respond with more sophistication to the current moment, treating it not as exceptional but rather as deserving of our critical attention—no more or less.

The challenges we face are felt across the continent (and, in various ways, around the world). In its role as the North American affiliate of the International Association of the History of Religion, NAASR will host a regional meeting of the IAHR to facilitate a conversation among scholars from Canada, Mexico, and the United States that brings our theoretical expertise to bear on this institutional perfect storm.

How should we respond to the rapidly changing economic and institutional landscape of academia? How can we demonstrate to our students the importance of thinking critically so as to give them language and tools for their own navigations of the social worlds in which they find themselves? What exactly is our work as scholars of religion in this sociopolitical/economic/institutional moment?

The 2026 program will retain last year’s conversational, roundtable format. To that end, individual submissions for individual presentations should consist simply of a brief (500-word max) abstract. Include your name, institution, and email address on your submission.

In lieu of submitting full papers in advance of the meeting, participants will submit an outline of key ideas (and a brief annotated bibliography, if relevant) in early October 2026. Ultimately, the aim is to publish these sessions as an edited volume within the NAASR Working Papers series with Equinox. Therefore, by submitting a proposal for the annual meeting, you are agreeing to contribute a version of your remarks as a chapter in said volume. While the program will emphasize a conversational format with only informal notes due in advance, full-length essays (roughly 3,000-4,000 words) will be due by January 31, 2027.

Proposals are due by April 28 at 5pm EST via an email to Merinda Simmons (merinda.simmons@ua.edu) with the subject line “NAASR 2026 Proposal.”

Direct any questions about this process to Merinda as well.

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CFP for our annual co-sponsored panel with the Redescribing Christian Origins unit of the SBL:

We invite papers that address the academic study of religion under authoritarian regimes.

The panel is particularly interested in approaching this topic with questions about the critical study of religion, its complicities, its resistances, and its various relationships with this phenomenon.

We especially encourage scholars from traditionally marginalized groups to submit their work.