NEH Summer Institute The Many and The One: Religion, Pluralism, and American History July 12-30, 2010

Architectural rendering of new IUPUI Campus Center

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture. Established in 1989, the Center is based in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Now with forty research fellows, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is considered the premier research institute in the nation working in American religious studies.

Center Programs, Activities, and Publications

Center activities include national conferences and symposia, books, essays, bibliographies and research projects, fellowships for young scholars, data-based communication about developments in the field of American religion, a newsletter devoted to the promotion of Center activities, and the semiannual scholarly periodical Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, which is among the highest-ranked academic journals in the nation.

Since its founding, the Center has influenced the field of American religious studies in multiple ways. On an academic level, it led the way in understanding religious pluralism with national conferences that “de-centered” religion. By placing Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and non-mainstream beliefs, behaviors, and rituals together in fashioning an analysis of American religion, the Center helped to increase scholarly and public understandings of the diversity of the American religious experience and established entirely new views from which to study religion in America.

As a public teaching venue, the Center for the Study of Religion and American culture has been unmatched by any other for nearly two decades. Journalists around the globe consistently turn to its officers for their insights about events in the United States. Print, radio, and television journalists interview the Center’s officers and research fellows hundreds of times annually. With seminars for young college, university, and seminary professors, the Center promotes better research and teaching about American religion by faculty. These sessions result in increased awareness and understanding of the diversity of American religious life and the manifold forms in which religion reveals itself in culture (and culture in religion) for thousands of students across the country.

Proceedings: 1st Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture now available

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is pleased to announce that Proceedings from the 1st Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture, held at the Omni Severin Hotel in June 2009, are now available. Download the PDF now.

Young Scholars in American Religion 2010-2012: Call for Applications

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture announces a program for early career scholars in American Religion. Beginning in October 2010, a series of seminars devoted to the enhancement of teaching and research for younger scholars in American Religion will be offered in Indianapolis. The aims of all sessions of the program are to develop ideas and methods of instruction in a supportive workshop environment, stimulate scholarly research and writing, and create a community of scholars that will continue into the future.

Dates:

Session I: October 14-17, 2010
Session II: April 28-May 1, 2011
Session III: October 13-16, 2011
Session IV: April 26-29, 2012
Session V: October 11-14, 2012

Seminar Leaders:

Ann B. Braude is Director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program and Senior Lecturer in American Religious HIstory at Harvard Divinity School. In addition to directing the WSRP, she teaches courses on the religious history of American women. Her first book, Radical Spirits: Spritualism and Women's rights in 19th-Century America, is now in its second edition, and she is the author of Women and Religion in America, the first history of the religion of American women for a general audience. She has published many articles on women in Judaism, Christian Science, and American religious life, and served as co-editor of Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women. Dr. Braude's most recent book is Saints and Sisters: Women and Religion in America.

Mark Valeri is the Ernest Trice Thompson Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education. His areas of specialization include eighteenth-century American religion, religion and social thought in America, Puritanism, and Reformation theology and the social history of Calvinism. Dr. Valeri's works include Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630-1965 (with Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Leigh E. Schmidt); Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy's New England: The Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary America (Mackemie Prize, Presbyterian Historical Society, 1995); Global Neighbors: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today's Economy (with Douglas A. Hicks); and, most recently, Heavenly Merchandise: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America.

Eligibility:

Scholars eligible to apply are those who have launched their careers within the last seven years and who are working in a subfield of the area of religion in North America, broadly understood. Ten scholars will be selected, with the understanding that they will commit to the program for all dates. Each participant will be expected to produce a course syllabus, with justification of teaching approach, and a publishable research article. All costs for transportation, lodging, and meals for the seminars will be covered, and there is no application fee.

To Apply:

Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae with three letters of reference directly supporting their application to the program (do not send portfolios of generic reference letters) as well as a 500-word essay indicating 1) why they are interested in participating, and 2) their current and projected research and teaching interests. The deadline for applications is 15 February 2010. Essays, CVs, and letters of reference should be sent to:

YSAR
Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, IUPUI
Cavanaugh Hall 417
425 University Blvd.
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140

Center Receives NEH Award

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture has been awarded $144,637 by the National Endowment of the Humanities to conduct a three-week summer institute for high school teachers on the role of religion in American history and life.

Twenty-five teachers will be selected to participate in the institute in July, 2010, the goal of which will be to provide vital, embodied examples teachers can use to make religion’s role come alive in their classrooms alongside other important topics.

"It is not possible to understand American culture without understanding religion's social role,” said Art Farnsley, co-director of the project with Philip Goff and Rachel Wheeler. “This grant gives us a tremendous opportunity to leverage our academic leadership in the study of American religion by allowing us to extend our work to high school teachers and, through them, to students all over the country."

The project has additionally been designated a National Endowment for the Humanities “We the People” project and is being supported in part by funds the agency has set aside for this special initiative.

“The goal of the ‘We the People’ initiative is to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in our nation’s history and culture and that advance knowledge of the principles that define America,” said Carole M. Watson, NEH Acting Chairman.

Jan Shipps receives Mellon Foundation Emeritus Fellowship

Jan Shipps, Professor Emerita at IUPUI, has been awarded an Emeritus Fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Emeritus Fellowships are intended to support the scholarly activities of outstanding faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who, at the time of taking up the fellowships, will be officially retired but continue to be active and productive in their fields. In addition, the program provides institutions with resources to defray incremental costs associated with the fellows,” said the announcement from Mellon.

Shipps, Professor Emerita of History and Religious Studies and currently a Research Fellow in the Center, is a renowned Mormon scholar. She is the author of Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons, and Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition.

“This fellowship will be indispensable to my work because it will permit me to complete much-needed on-site research that will allow me to finish a book I have been working on for nearly a decade. The working title of the book is Being Mormon: The Latter-day Saints since World War II,” said Shipps.

CSRAC named Signature Center

The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is pleased to announce that it has been named a Signature Center of IUPUI. The Signature Center designation, new to IUPUI, is based upon several criteria, including research strength, academic distinction, and scholarly record of faculty investigators.