Beginning in the fall of 2022, a series of seminars devoted to the enhancement of teaching and research will be offered in Indianapolis. The aims of all sessions of the program are to develop ideas and methods of teaching in a supportive workshop environment, stimulate scholarly research and writing, and create a community of scholars that will continue into the future.
The dates for these seminars are:
- Session I: October 20th-23rd, 2022
- Session II: March 30th-April 2nd, 2023
- Session III: October 12th-15th, 2023
- Session IV: April 11th-14th, 2024
- Participants will also be expected to join 3 virtual meetings.
Jennifer Graber and Omar M. McRoberts will lead the 2022-2024 seminars.
Jennifer Graber is Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a PhD in Religion from Duke University in 2006. She works on religion and violence, inter-religious encounters, and visionary movements in American prisons and on the American frontier. Her first book, The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, explores the intersection of church and state during the founding of the nation’s first prisons. Her latest book, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, considers religious transformations among Kiowa Indians and Anglo Americans during their conflict over Indian Territory, or what is now known as Oklahoma. Her new project, “Our World Renewed,” focuses on Native actors, sources, and epistemologies in the so-called Ghost Dance of 1870 and 1890.
Most recently, Professor Graber has published an article on Native American “prophets” in American Religion, consulted with the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and the Sing Sing Prison Museum, served on UT’s College of Liberal Arts Diversity and Inclusion Plan Task Force and the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, and has shared work in The Canopy Form and H-Net Federal History.
Omar M. McRoberts is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and The College at The University of Chicago. McRoberts’ scholarly and teaching interests include the sociology of religion, urban sociology, urban poverty, race, and collective action. His first book, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood, is based on an ethnographic study of religious life in Four Corners: a poor, predominantly black neighborhood in Boston containing twenty-nine congregations. It explains the high concentration, wide variety, and ambiguous social impact of religious activity in the neighborhood. It won the 2005 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
McRoberts currently is writing a book on black religious responses to, and influences on, social welfare policy in the New Deal, War on Poverty, and Welfare Reform eras.
Applying to the Young Scholars program:
Scholars eligible to apply are those working in a subfield of the area of religion in North America, broadly understood, who have a terminal degree in hand, a full-time academic position (tenure track or renewable long-term), and have launched their careers within the last seven years. Scholars are selected with the understanding that they will commit to the program for all seminar dates. Participants are expected to produce two course syllabi, with justification of teaching approach, and a publishable research article over the course of their seminars.
Applicants must submit (a) a curriculum vitae; (b) a 750-word essay indicating why they are interested in participating and describing their current and projected research and teaching interests; and (c) email information for three scholars willing to write letters of reference (portfolios with generic reference letters are not accepted).
All application materials, including letters of recommendation, must be received by April 22nd. Please note that the Center will not request supporting letters until after the application is submitted so plan accordingly. Click here to apply to the Young Scholars program.