{"id":1254,"date":"2009-11-15T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-15T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2009-11-15T19:15:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T19:15:00","slug":"in-which-we-use-the-i-word-at-the-aar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1254","title":{"rendered":"In Which We Use ‘the I-Word’ at the AAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attendance at this year’s American Academy of Religion <\/a>annual meeting was down somewhat, an AAR staff member told me: about 5,000 instead of 7,000-8,000. He attributed the drop to the economy, not to the fact that the meeting was held in Montreal. I certainly heard no complaints about the venue.<\/p>\n

Although I spent the Saturday being a tourist of magic<\/a>, I was still able to make the main Paganism-related sessions.<\/p>\n

The Contemporary Pagan Studies Group<\/a> had three sessions, and they were well-attended by AAR standards, with more than fifty people at each one.<\/p>\n

Our shared session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group went well. Suzanne Owen<\/a> took on the whole question of how “indigenous” is employed in a paper called “Indigenous Religious Expressions? Mi’kmaq Tradition and British Druidry,” that I would like to read more of.<\/p>\n

Amy Whitehead offered an illustrated version of her paper published recently in The Pomegranate<\/i><\/a>, but in retrospect, it really belonged in our standalone session with the theme of “Idolatry.”<\/p>\n

Yes, the I-word, sometimes subsumed in the broader term “materiality,” as in Graham Harvey’s <\/a>presentation, “Materiality and Spirituality Aren’t Opposites (Necessarily): Paganism and Objects.”<\/p>\n

The presentations were good, but of necessity just nibbled at the edges of topic, so I think that we will be having a session on “Idolatry Revisited” next year in Atlanta. <\/p>\n

Our other session, “The Book and the Practice: The Relationship between Literature and Contemporary Paganism,” reflected one of my ongoing concerns–let’s move beyond citing the relationship between Stranger in a Strange Land<\/a> and the Church of All Worlds<\/a> and look at a broader range of “artistic representations … and their influence on and the mutually interdependent relations with a variety of Paganisms as they are practiced today,” to quote the language of the call for papers.<\/p>\n

There is a lot more to do there too. At least we are not running out of ideas for conference sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attendance at this year’s American Academy of Religion annual meeting was down somewhat, an AAR staff member told me: about 5,000 instead of 7,000-8,000. He attributed the drop to the economy, not to the fact that the meeting was held in Montreal. I certainly heard no complaints about the venue. Although I spent the Saturday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[5,4],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-ke","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7114,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7114","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":0},"title":"Contemporary Pagan Studies at the AAR, 2015","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"All of the evaluating and negotiating is completed, and the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion will be presenting the following sessions at the annual meeting, held November 21\u201324, 2015, in Atlanta: 1 Joint session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group: \"The Problem of 'Religion' in\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":3913,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3913","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":1},"title":"One Week Left for AAR Paper Proposals","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The deadline for proposals for the 2012 American Academy of Religion annual meeting is Tuesday, March 13. Here are the suggested topics for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group: For a possible cosponsored session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group, we invite papers on the intersection of contemporary indigenous traditions and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":318,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=318","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":2},"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":69,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=69","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":3},"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":2371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2371","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"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":1080,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1080","url_meta":{"origin":1254,"position":5},"title":"Midway through AAR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","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=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}