{"id":1080,"date":"2008-11-03T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T18:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2008-11-03T18:24:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T18:24:00","slug":"midway-through-aar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1080","title":{"rendered":"Midway through AAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I come away from this year’s AAR annual meeting with any one Big Idea, it is that I am glad to see Pagan Studies moving away from “Wiccans and Odinists,” as Jone Salomonsen<\/a> put it, and towards a broader sense of a “a way to think about religion” (or religious behavior). Our joint session with the Religion and Popular Culture Group started the weekend off well, and presenting a co-written work-in-progress paper and slide show there got me thinking about how I want to return to the whole nexus of nature religion, civil religion, and small-p paganism as well as thinking about capital-P Paganism.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the election that has lasted forever is almost over!<\/p>\n

Last night, from the 23rd floor of the Chicago Hilton Towers, I looked down a floodlit, fenced-off portion of Grant Park, where Sen. Obama’s victory rally will be held. The mayor has “suggested” that businesses in this part of town close at 3 p.m. on Election Day. No doubt they expect a riot if Obama loses — and probably if he wins as well, by the same mob-logic that caused violence and destruction in Philadelphia<\/a> when the Phillies won the World Series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I come away from this year’s AAR annual meeting with any one Big Idea, it is that I am glad to see Pagan Studies moving away from “Wiccans and Odinists,” as Jone Salomonsen put it, and towards a broader sense of a “a way to think about religion” (or religious behavior). Our joint session […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[48,13],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-nature-religion","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-hq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":69,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=69","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":0},"title":"Off to See the Pagan Studies Crowd","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 20, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been turning off the overhead fluorescent lights in my office, leaving just the desk and reading lights on, so that I can watch the eastern sky turn mauve over the prairie. Today is effectively the first day of Thanksgiving break, and that means leaving for the annual meeting of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":318,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=318","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":1},"title":"Pagan Studies in the Academy\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan Studies in the Academy (AAR musings, part 2) Right now more than 50 scholars who work at least some of the time in Pagan Studies are anxiously awaiting an announcement from the American Academy of Religion's program committee. Steered by Cat McEarchern, organizer of the last two Conferences on\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":328,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=328","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":2},"title":"Pagan Studies in the Academy\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan Studies in the Academy (AAR Musings, Part 3) I mentioned earlier an attempt by scholars of contemporary Paganism to gain program-unit status in the American Academy of Religion. Good news from Cat McEarchern, who has been doing the heavy lifting on the proposal: We got it. I heard just\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":772,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=772","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":3},"title":"The "fastest-growing" religion?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Pitzl-Waters links to a survey showing \"nature religion\" to be the fastest-growing religious category in Australia.Jim Lewis, a long-time scholar of new religious movements, presented a similar roundup last week at AAR-SBL. Interestingly, he found the number of Pagans in English-speaking countries to come in consistently at about 0.1\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2371","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":4},"title":"Seeking AAR Pagan Studies Papers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After reading the Call for Papers, now is the time to submit proposals for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group's sessions at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting. We have two topics this year: What does Pagan studies offer to academic analysis and critique? How do historical constructions of \u201cpaganism\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6133,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6133","url_meta":{"origin":1080,"position":5},"title":"Animism, Religion, Bloggers, and the AAR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is followed by what I think of as Hell Weekend. At least it is that if you chair or co-chair one of the many program units. Me, I am co-chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group, but I suspect that all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}