{"id":69,"date":"2003-11-20T00:07:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-20T00:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2011-08-24T14:29:44","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:29:44","slug":"69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Off to See the Pagan Studies Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 the American Academy of Religion<\/a>, this year in Atlanta, a city in which I would otherwise have no interest what so ever. (The AAR is slowly divorcing itself from its parent, the Society for Biblical Literature<\/a>; annual meetings will go their separate ways in a few years.)<\/p>\n

Eleven years ago I attended my first AAR-SBL meeting in San Francisco. I knew no one other than my professors from graduate school. (I had attended a couple of religional AAR meetings only.) It was huge, overwhelming (probably 7,000-8,000 attendees), humbling. I felt outclassed and out of place, a nobody, in his first year of teaching at an unknown state university.<\/p>\n

In 1995 (Philadelphia), the first group of scholars working with Paganism and\/or “nature religion” got together just for a meet-and-greet. “Nature religion,” of course, can be either a euphemism for Paganism or, as in the case of Bron Taylor’s <\/a>or Catherine Albanese’s <\/a>work, something much broader. We still have not bridged that gap.<\/p>\n

By 1997 (San Francisco, again) we were applying for “consultation” status in the AAR–a regular meeting slot, in other words. We were turned down and kept on presenting papers and having panel discussions in the marginal “additional meetings” category. And that year Fritz Muntean and Diana Taylor started The Pomegranate<\/em> (see links on the right), which is now a bona-fide peer-reviewed journal. And in 1998 (Orlando) I met Erik Hanson of AltaMira Press<\/a>, who was bidding for but did not get Bron’s and Jeff Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature<\/em> <\/a>project, which went to Continuum instead. But thanks to that contact, I got to know Erik and eventually signed to write Her Hidden Children<\/em>: I will be taking a rough draft ms. to Atlanta with me.<\/p>\n

And this year our little additional meeting has grown to an all-day Pagan Studies session.<\/p>\n

I’m still humbled, but now it’s by the way in which interest has grown, the volume of scholarly writing has exploded, and by the fact that I’m editing The Pomegranate<\/em>. Now I’ll be approaching people to publish papers, soliciting book mss. for the AltaMira Pagan Studies series<\/a> . . . suddenly four days don’t seem like enough.<\/p>\n

Expect more news here in about a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 the American Academy of Religion, […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[137,5],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-69","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12672,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12672","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":0},"title":"Pagan Studies: 2022 American Academy of Religion Call for Papers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 25, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Call for Proposals for the Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, November 19\u201322, 2022 is now available, and the PAPERS System\u00a0is open for submission. This is the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit's particular call, to save you searching. More info from the AAR secret headquarters in north Georgia: The Annual Meeting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/denver-conv.-bureau.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":318,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=318","url_meta":{"origin":69,"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":4769,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4769","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":2},"title":"Journalism and the AAR-SBL","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Journalists are few at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature's joint annual meetings.\u00a0 But the New York Times' Mark Oppenheimer, searching around for \"the narrative,\" noted that some fraction of the participants wore flowing robes and weirdly remarked about people carrying hefty reference books, as\u00a0 Steven\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":311,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=311","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":3},"title":"AAR-SBL Musings, take 1 I\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"AAR-SBL Musings, take 1 I actually left San Antonio, Texas, site of this year's American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, on Tuesday the 23rd, but that was the beginning of a two-day drive home through the live oaks, cotton fields, mesquite, and prickly pear of West Texas,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":560,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=560","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":4},"title":"Pagan Studies at the American\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan Studies at the American Academy of ReligionTen years ago here in Philadelphia, a group of 20 or so people sat in a circle of chairs at the Philadelphia Convention Center. The meeting was convened by Dennis Carpenter and Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary to bring together people interested in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1254,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1254","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":5},"title":"In Which We Use ‘the I-Word’ at the AAR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","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=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}