Announcements
Call for Abstracts
Special Issue on Religion and Health (Pippa Koch, Guest Editor)
Scholarly attention to the intersection of religion and health has grown rapidly over the last three decades. A special issue of American Religion will be dedicated to this intersection, and we are currently soliciting abstracts for articles that explore these two themes in the context of the Americas. We are open to articles exploring a range of time periods, from prehistory to the present, as well as thinking about the Americas within a larger, interconnected geopolitical context. We welcome submissions touching on all health-related topics, including medicine, wellness, disability, disease, caregiving, etc. Final articles should be no more than 6,000 words in length, including citations, and will be submitted by July 31, 2026.
The goal for this issue will be to highlight new research as well as to ask pressing questions about how scholarship on religion and health challenges our views of American religion more broadly, including what “counts” as religion, how religious practices and teachings transform embodiment, how lived experiences shape theological perspectives, and more.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to amrel@iu.edu by December 1, 2025. Questions may be directed to Philippa Koch or amrel@iu.edu.
Call For Submissions: The American Religion Dissertation Prize
Please send submissions to amrel@iu.edu by August 30, 2025, and include:
an abstract of the dissertation
the complete dissertation as a pdf file
the author’s current CV
The American Religion Dissertation Prize, awarded by the journal American Religion and sponsored by Indiana University’s Center for Religion and the Human, recognizes outstanding dissertation writing in the field broadly understood as “religion in the Americas.” Our definitions of these operative terms (“religion” and “America”) are capacious, and we welcome submissions that deploy a broad array of methods, archives, and geographical orientations. The author of the winning dissertation will receive $1,000.
The prize is open to recently completed and defended doctoral dissertations from any department and institution in any country. Dissertations must be written in English and must have been completed and successfully defended between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025.
Self-nominations and nominations from faculty are accepted. Faculty nominators should send the author’s name and the dissertation’s title to amrel@iu.edu. Self-nominators should also send to amrel@iu.edu and should also include: 1) an abstract of the dissertation, 2) the complete dissertation as a pdf file, and 3) the author’s current CV.
Submissions are due August 30, 2025.
Please direct inquiries to amrel@iu.edu.
Previous Winners of The American Religion Dissertation Prize
American Religion journal supports graduate student workers’ unionization
Indiana University graduate students are well known for their excellence in research and teaching. All of us here at the university benefit from their contributions. They are an integral part of the university’s identity as a research institution.
Graduate students work hard as associate instructors, instructors of record, editorial assistants, managing editors, research assistants, and researchers in their own right. It is our understanding that the graduate workers of IU have demonstrated an overwhelming support for unionization in recent months. They deserve to negotiate for their own working conditions.
As the editors of American Religion, we express support for graduate workers to have a pathway for unionization. We ask the Indiana University administration not to interfere with organizing and to recognize the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition-United Electrical Workers (IGWC-UE) union.
M. Cooper Harriss
Co-editor, American Religion
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Sarah Imhoff
Co-editor, American Religion
Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies
Associate Professor of Religious Studies