Welcome from ISSRNC President Mark Peterson

Dear ISSRNC colleagues,

Welcome!

I am happy and excited to follow Sarah Pike as President of the ISSRNC. Her leadership has left us in great shape as we continue our ongoing mission to create opportunities for rigorous, and effervescent, interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersections of religion, nature, and culture. If you haven’t yet, be sure to read Sarah’s farewell letter to the membership.

I’m especially happy to welcome our new board members-at-large Michael Northcott, Robin Veldman, and Kelsey Simkins.  They’ve joined the new executive committee (Evan Berry, Kristina Tiedje, Amanda Baugh) in beginning the planning process for our next conference at the University of Cork in Ireland (13-16 June 2019) on Religion/Water /Climate: Changing Cultures and Landscapes.

A quick word about me:  my background almost seems to mirror the mission of the ISSRNC.  I began my academic career writing about Hegel’s natural philosophy but I was diverted into environmental concerns when I landed in the same department as Jim Cheney (one of the founders of the Journal of Environmental Ethics).  Hegel jokes (yes, he does) that all intellectual conditions eventually “fall to the Ground” and, for me, the ground of my work literally became The Ground.  My field of interest became planetary and my approach, interdisciplinary.  Healthy ecosystems require diversity: healthy scholarship does too.  I think that’s what the ISSRNC provides.   In my own case current manuscripts underway include an Aristotelian approach to environmental ethics, the use of Peircean semiotics to unpack mythological and religious discourse, and a still developing existential account of playing the ukulele.  My professors always told me that scholarship should be rigorous, but fun.

June 2019: Cork Conference Planning

Our next conference is set for June 2019 at the University of Cork.  Please be sure to take a look at the Call For Papers  and forward it on to your university colleagues, research networks, and students.  Those of you who have attended our conferences in the past know well how many unexpected connections – and how much raw scholarly satisfaction – occurs from the collision of multiple disciplines and so many other first-rate researchers. Some of our best work comes from having coffee, or a beer, with new friends from vastly different fields of expertise. Next June promises to be another opportunity for this kind of exchange.

In a future email we may be asking for help staffing some of the conference organizing slots, so be sure to look for that if you’re interested in participating – this is especially the case for our European members who might have found it difficult to attend the last few conferences which were held in the States. June 13, 2019 will be here before we know it.

November 2018: our annual American Academy of Religion gathering-get-together-symposium-workshop-roundtable-anything-but-meeting meeting

The Board has continued to consider new and better ways to make it possible for Society members to spend more time together between conferences. With this in mind, the ISSRNC has joined the AAR as a Related Scholarly Organization and will be hosting Friday evening get-togethers at present and future AAR Annual Meetings.

Share your scholarly work

The best part of our conferences has been the intellectual exchange that happens across the diversity of disciplines we represent.  To keep the conversation happening between conferences, we’d like to help your colleagues stay up-to-date with your latest work. If you’ve been presenting papers, giving Ted Talks, finishing articles, book chapters, or books please let us know so that we can publicize it on the website and our social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, and Academia.edu).  If you’re teaching new courses, we are looking for new course syllabi to share with our network as part of our Pedagogies of Religion and Ecology syllabus section. Your friends and colleagues want to know what you’ve been up to. Please send your announcements to Society Secretary Amanda Baugh.

We also invite you to renew your membership and, if you haven’t already, set up a profile on ISSRNC.org [more information about membership can be found here], which allows you to connect with and learn about the work of other ISSRNC members.

Interested in participating? 

• Social media: We are looking for someone who’s a bit tech-savvy with social media to oversee the Society’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. If you’d be interested, please send me an email and let me know!
• Committees: There are also a number of ISSRNC standing committees. Have a look and, if you see something interesting to you, again let me know.
• Student members: The Student Affairs Committee is planning to reach out to student members again soon, so keep an eye out for their email.

Opportunities for graduate students and early career scholars 

A major draw for membership during the conferences has been for graduate students  and scholars early in their careers who need a place to present work that walks along the interdisciplinary tide lines of their own discipline – the one for which they are technically, institutionally, rewarded. But what if your interests lie on the edges or intersections with other disciplines?  Where do you go to present, meet other scholars like yourself, and bounce ideas around over coffee or tea?  This is an area of scholarship the ISSRNC has been preoccupied with providing ever since our founding. If you have other new and innovative ideas about how we can continue and expand these opportunities, please send me an email!

Submissions to the Journal.

The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, which has been published quarterly since 2007, explores through the social and natural sciences the complex relationships among human beings, their diverse ‘religions’ (broadly and diversely defined) and the earth’s living systems, while providing a venue for analysis and debate over what constitutes an ethically appropriate relationship between our own species and the environments we inhabit. The success of the Society Journal has been due to wonderful member’s contributions.  Check the Society Journal page for more information on submission guidelines and other opportunities.

Reminders:

1. Please propagate the CFP for Cork across your own networks: your social media platforms, university email lists, and out to other societies and associations you may belong to. [Here’s the link for the pdf version]
2. Let you Society colleagues hear from you! Send in announcements of your latest work, presentations, publications, etc. to Amanda Baugh and we’ll put them up on the social media sites.

Working with friends and colleagues in the ISSRNC has been one of the most rewarding parts of my academic career.  I promise to continue to help the Society cultivate that spirit of rigorous – and joyful – interdisciplinary conversation alive as we head into the next few years.

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your work with the rest of the membership!

My very best wishes,

Mark