Religion and Politics

Proposed outstanding scholar award

From the Chair:

One of the items to be voted on at the business meeting in September will be a proposal by the current Religion and Politics Executive Committee to introduce an outstanding scholar award. The proposed award would be presented to a scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of religion and politics. This contribution should be through a combination of excellent and widely influential scholarship, policy input/impact, public engagement and service. The award would be presented bi-annually to begin with, with the option to move to annual in the future. The award would be made following review of applications by an appointed committee. The winner will be honored at the Annual Convention with a Plaque, a monetary award and a round-table symposium honoring their work. We propose that the first such of these awards would be given at the 2018 Annual Convention.

The award is intended as an addition to, not replacement for, the practice of awarding special ‘life time achievement awards’ for scholars who have made substantial contributions to the Section on the event of their retirement.

The Committee seeks to name the award after a woman and/or person of color and would appreciate suggestions/recommendations of suitable figures. Please send these and any comments or suggestions regarding the focus and articulation of the award to the chair e.k.wilson@rug.nl by 15 July 2017.

The proposal to introduce the new award as well as who it should be named after will be voted on at the 2017 Annual Business Meeting of the section, and will also be included as part of the online voting process. If the vote to introduce the award is affirmative, a call for nominations will be circulated in the Fall, following the annual convention, in time to include the symposium in program submissions for next year’s convention.

Thanks in advance for your comments and input.

Best wishes,

Erin

Call for Nominations for 3 openings on Executive Committee

From the Chair:

The Religion and Politics Section of the APSA is pleased to announce a Call for Nominations for candidates to stand in an upcoming election to serve a two-year term on the Executive Committee of the Religion and Politics section. Three vacancies will be filled in this election. Section members who wish to self-nominate as candidates should forward a one-paragraph biography, including their institutional affiliation, to the Section Chair at e.k.wilson@rug.nl no later than July 15, 2017.

Nominees who do not self-nominate will be asked by the Chair to consent to having their name on the ballot.

This Call for Nominations will close on July 15, 2017. The election will take place at the Annual Business Meeting held during the APSA Annual Convention in San Francisco on Thursday, August 31 2017, 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Facility: Parc 55
Room: Cyril Magnin III.

Members who are unable to attend the business meeting in person will be able to vote for nominees via an online ballot from 1 August until 5pm on 31 August. Details of the ballot will be announced following the closure of nominations.

I look forward to receiving your nominations.

Thank you,

Erin Wilson
Section Chair, Religion and Politics, APSA

Deadline for Weber Best Conference Paper Award Nominations Extended to April 15, 2017

The Weber Best Conference Paper Award recognizes the best paper dealing with religion and politics presented at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting. The paper should address a timely and relevant topic, within the discipline and beyond, in a theoretically innovative and methodologically thorough manner. Please submit nominations to the chair of the committee.

Deadline for nominations: 15 April 2017 – Self nominations welcome!

Prof Monica Duffy-Toft (Chair)
Professor of Government and Public Policy
Blavatnik School of Government
University of Oxford, UK
monica.toft@bsg.oxford.ac.uk

Dr David Siroky
Associate Professor of Political Science
School of Politics and Global Studies
Arizona State University, USA
david.siroky@asu.edu

Dr. Tanya B. Schwarz
Visiting Research Fellow
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame, USA
tanyabschwarz@gmail.com

Dr Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom
Senior Lecturer
Political Science Department
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
pazit.bennun@mail.huji.ac.il

The Inaugural Ted G. Jelen Award Goes to…

By Paul A. Djupe and Angelia R. Wilson

One of the exciting features of this blog is its integration with the APSA Religion and Politics Section Journal, Politics & Religion. These are exciting times in the section and at the journal in part because of the slew of new awards the section is able to give out. One of them that we had the privilege of being involved with is The Ted G. Jelen Award for the best article published in the journal for each volume. First a word about Ted.

Ted (PhD OSU 1979) is an outstanding political scientist with a special relationship to the subfield and journal. He was a founding member of the organized section and was the co-founding editor of Politics & Religion with Sabrina Ramet in 2007, handing it over to Angie and I in great shape after five years (volumes from 2008-2011). But that scratches the surface of Ted’s service to the subfield. Ted has served on innumerable award committees, was the editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and has shared his expertise regularly with authors as panel discussant. There is arguably no political scientist who has helped other scholars more to move their religion and politics ideas to print than Ted.

The first volume considered covered 2016 (vol 10). We had a wealth of articles from which choose the inaugural award winner and it was difficult to settle on just one. In the end, we chose:

Gershon, Sarah Allen, Adrian D. Pantoja, and J. Benjamin Taylor. 2016. “God in the Barrio?: The Determinants of Religiosity and Civic Engagement among Latinos in the United States.” Politics & Religion 9(1): 84-110.

The piece challenges the conventional wisdom that religious engagement is tightly tied to political activity, finding that the tether weakens across the generations of Latinos in the US. The paper also demonstrates that Latinos are secularizing along with other Americans, but is able to conclude that a vibrant public sphere does not have to suffer as a result.

Also posted here.

New Section Award – Distinguished Reviewer Awards

In order recognize the important work involved in the peer review process, the Section Journal, Politics and Religion, will honor five outstanding reviewers per year. Selected by the Journal editor or editorial team, honorees will be recognized for their dedication at the annual business meeting and each will receive a $50 gift certificate from Cambridge University Press.