Letter from the Chair (October 6, 2014)

Dear Section Members:

Two important announcements from your Section Chair.

First: the Religion and Politics section is now on Twitter! Please spread the word and follow us @apsa_relpol

You can follow the twitter feed on our section website: http://www.apsa-section-religion-and-politics.org/home.html

Second: I would like to invite all section members to become a member of our award committees for 2015 awards – the Aaron Wildavsky Dissertation Award, the Best Paper Award, and the Best Publication Award (descriptions below). These awards not only recognise the cutting-edge work being done in the field but actively shape the field and the careers of both emerging and established scholars.

Please email me at eshurd@northwestern.edu to express your interest. Committees will be convened in December and awards will be determined in June and presented at the 2015 meeting. If you can't commit to serving this year, please make a note to nominate your best dissertators, paper presenters, and publications later this year.

The Best Paper Award recognizes the best paper dealing with religion and politics presented at the previous years APSA Annual Meeting.

The Aaron Wildavsky Award recognizes the best dissertation on religion and politics successfully defended within the last two years.

The Hubert Morken Best Book Award is given for the best book dealing with religion and politics published during the last two years (2012-2014). The next Hubert Morken Best Book Award will be presented at the 2015 APSA meeting.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Chair, APSA Religion and Politics Section
Department of Political Science
Northwestern University
eshurd@northwestern.edu

Section Chair (2014 – 2016): Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Hurd

Professor of Political Science
Department of Religious Studies (by courtesy)
Northwestern University

eshurd@northwestern.edu

Northwestern home page

 

 

Research Interests

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd teaches and writes on the politics of religion, US foreign relations, and the global politics of the Middle East at Northwestern, where she is Professor of Political Science and Religious Studies. Hurd is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008), Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), and co-editor of Politics of Religious Freedom and Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age. She is co-PI, with Winnifred Sullivan, on a Luce-supported collaborative research project “Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad” (2016-2019) and co-organized the “Politics of Religious Freedom” project (2011-2014). At Northwestern she directs the Buffett Faculty Research Group on Global Politics & Religion.

Books
 
image from ecx.images-amazon.comBeyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
 
image from faculty.wcas.northwestern.eduPolitics of Religious Freedom (co-edited with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Saba Mahmood and Peter Danchin). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

amazon   |   barnes&noble

 

image from faculty.wcas.northwestern.eduThe Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics).  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Morken Award for the Best Publication in Religion and Politics (2008-2010).

amazon   |   barnes&noble

image from faculty.wcas.northwestern.eduComparative Secularisms in a Global Age, co-edited with Linell E. Cady. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (Paperback edition, 2013).

amazon   |   barnes&noble

Past Chairs

Call for papers: Rethinking Political Catholicism: Empirical and Normative Perspectives

A call for papers for an international conference in Rome at John Cabot University – May 22-23, 2014. The conference will take place during a new Graduate-level studies Summer Institute on Religion and Global Politics.

From the conference website:

Although the study of religion and politics has blossomed over the past decade, the normative debates over the appropriate place of religion in modern democracies often remain divorced from the study of the actual practices and meanings of religion in these democracies. Consequently, many new normative concepts and arguments have not filtered down to the empirical study of religion, while normative debates are often inadequately informed by the empirical realities of contemporary religious practices and beliefs.

Rethinking Political Catholicism aims to bridge this divide by focusing on the fertile case of political Catholicism in Italy. Empirically, the conference aims to take stock of political Catholicism in Italy today, compare it with Catholic and Muslim politics elsewhere, and use contemporary theoretical and normative insights to better understand its post-secular dynamics. Normatively, the conference aims to evaluate the practices of contemporary political Catholicism in Italy and elsewhere, and thus contribute to developing a more sophisticated debate about the proper roles of religious politics in contemporary democracies.

Read the full description here. 

The call for papers comes from:

Michael D. Driessen, PhD

Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
John Cabot University
Via della Lungara, 233
00165 Rome, Italy

2014 Best Paper Award: Call for Nominations

Dear APSA Politics and Religion Section Members:

As the 2014 Weber Best Paper Award Committee of the APSA Religion and Politics Section, we invite you to consider nominating a paper that you believe to be truly outstanding for the 2014 Best Paper Award.

The Best Paper Award recognizes the best paper dealingwith religion and politics presented at the previous years Annual Meeting. Only the papers presented at 2013 APSA meeting can be nominated for the 2014 award.

Nominated papers should be sent to the chair of the committee, Ramazan Kilinc (rkilinc@unomaha.edu), by email by March 1, 2014.

Thanks in advance for taking time to support your colleagues' research.

We look forward to receiving your nominations.

Sincerely,

2014 Best Paper Award Committee
John Forren, Miami University, Ohio
Ramazan Kilinc, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Jeremy Menchik, Boston University