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NAASR Annual Meeting 2026 CFP
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.
- How does authoritarian power shape the way scholars imagine/understand/theorize religion?
- How have scholars of religion censored themselves?
- How has some scholarship served authoritarianism or nationalist ideologies?
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.
Method and Theory: CFP
CALL FOR PAPERS – FEBRUARY 2025 – METHOD AND THEORY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION
The editors of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR) would like to announce calls for
papers on four special topics: 1) On Money, 2) The Meat Paradox, 3) Decolonizing the Study of Religion,
and 4) Global Connected Histories for the Study of Religion. See below for brief descriptions; the full call
is attached. Feel free to distribute this call widely and share with anyone who may be interested.
MTSR is the journal of the North American Association of the Study of Religion and encourages new
submissions that broaden methodological and theoretical horizons in the academic study of religion. Click here to submit an article on any topic relevant to the journal. If you are submitting in response to this CfP, please select the article type “Call for Papers” and be sure that your abstract and cover letter mention the relevant call (e.g. “Decolonizing the Study of Religion”).
1. On Money
This CfP invites scholars of religion to approach money by critically examining the construction of its
apparent normality, and the process by which money as a technological fiction is transformed into
something “real.” Without reducing “money” to “religion,” it aims to deconstruct the ordinariness of money. How can method and theory in the study of religion bring new insights into the mythologization of moneyand the mythic entity called money?
2. The Meat Paradox
Human relationships with meat have always been paradoxical. While some see meat consumption as
necessary, others consider it to be murder. Many societies (past and present) have handled this paradox
through ceremonies expressing gratitude and respect for the animal. Moderns more often resolve it
through concealment and desensitization. Existing studies on meat in religious studies tend to focus on
ancient sacrificial rituals. This CfP asks scholars of religion instead to consider modern industrial systems
of meat production and meat consumption. The goal here is not to discuss the ostensibly “religious”
aspect of meat production, or the lack thereof. Rather, how might the tools of religious studies shed new
light on such topics as animal-human relations, concealment of violence, mechanization of killing,
production of indifference through divisions of labor, and more?
3. Decolonizing the Study of Religion
MTSR seeks papers that will contribute to a more robust theorization of decolonization in the study of
religion. Scholars working in this area have argued that decolonizing religious studies must include
questioning assumptions about what counts as legitimate scholarship in the field and who has the right to determine its contours (Avalos 2024; Nye 2024). Colonial modernity arguably produced the entire field of religious studies and the very concept of “religion” itself. If so, what kinds of transformation should be carried out in the name of decolonizing the field? What does decolonizing religious studies mean for method and theory in the field? Where and how could the study of religion be reconstructed after its colonial structures have been dismantled?
4. Global Connected Histories for the Study of Religion
This CfP aims to deepen recent critiques of the world religions paradigm and the idea of European
Enlightenment. The dominant discourse of modernity assumes its origin in the European Enlightenment
and its eventual triumph over “religion.” More critical narratives have described how ostensibly “secular”
modern thinking colonized indigenous ways of life in many parts of the world. Recent work in archaeology and intellectual history, however, suggests an ancient history of mutual influence across continents and deep historical connections among the traditions commonly known as “world religions.” At the same time, new scholarship shows how Africans, Native Americans, and enslaved people in the Americas played key roles in the intellectual revolutions of the Enlightenment, including the emergence of secular epistemes.
MTSR invites papers that consider the implications of connected histories of “world religions,” and/or non-European origins of the European Enlightenment, for method and theory in the study of religion.
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