SORAAAD - Study of Religion as an Analytic Discipline


Mission

SORAAAD was created as a means to further the reach of the best qualitative analytical work in the study of religion. Our objective has been to function as both a workshop and a medium of scholarly exchange respecting critical and social theories, methodology, conceptualization and research design. Having served as SORAAAD’s primary sponsor since 2014, as of 2017 The University of Regina Religion Department is now the official institutional center for SORAAAD’s activities. This alliance has been designed to sustain the innovation of research design, proliferate techniques, and further the immediate integration of findings into the training of graduate students and undergraduate curriculum.

See our Participation and Non-discrimination Statement


SORAAAD Workshop 2021: Representation and the Analytical Study of Religion

In its 10th year and with an eye to major events in 2020-2021, SORAAAD will focus on representation and the analytical study of religion. Attention to representation in research design, including what factors into how we understand religion and conceive of what we should study, were among the workshop’s originating concerns. In its most basic terms, representation is a means of characterizing and accounting for elements in “a sample” from which we generalize in order to characterize phenomena. Representation conjures simultaneously the need to address the manufacture and designation of alterity and normativity (SORAAAD, 2012 PDF) , to cultivate a capacity to chart arrays of human expression and activity, to recognize and rectify voids, and to allow this work to change how we compare, explain, and conceptualize (Long, 1995; Moultrie, 2017, Compton et. al, 2017, Garland-Thomson, 2015) . . . . more

SORAAAD Workshops (2011-2019)

SORAAAD Committee

  • Ipsita Chatterjea - Executive Director
  • William E. Arnal - Director - Professor, Department of Gender, Religion, and Critical Studies, University of Regina
  • David Walker - Editorial Director - Assistant Professor,  Religion Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Rebecca Raphael - Editorial Director - Professor,  Philosophy Department, Texas State University
  • Randall Styers, Associate Professor, Head of Department, Religion Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Jens Kreinath, Associate Professor, Anthropology Department, Wichita State University
  • Shreena Niketa Gandhi, Fixed Term Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University
  • Jamel Velji, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Claremont-McKenna College
  • Edward Silver, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Hunter College
  • David Feltmate, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Auburn University at Montgomery
  • Kayla Renée Wheeler, Assistant Professor, Gender and Diversity Studies, Xavier University
  • Francis Stewart, Lecturer, Theology, Philosophy and Ethics Department, Bishop Grosseteste University; Director of the Edward Bailey Research Center for the Study of Implicit Religion

SORAAAD Board of Advisors

  • Kelly J. Baker, Editor-in-Chief, Women in Higher Education; Managing Editor, Disability Acts
  • Rudy Busto, Associate Professor, Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • David Frankfurter, William Goodwin Aurelio Chair of the Appreciation of Scripture, Department of Religion, Boston University
  • Tim Jensen, Associate Professor, Head of Study, Department of History, Study of Religions, Sydansk University; Honorarprofessor, Leibniz Universität, Hannover; President, International Association for the Study of Religion
  • Monique Moultrie, Associate Professor, African-American Studies, Religious Studies, Georgia State University