Exciting New Initiative!

If you’ve browsed through your AAR program book, you may have noticed an “Additional Meeting” on Saturday morning. In previous years, there was an official AAR program unit, the Seminar on Religion in the American West, where you could get your American West fix. You may know that seminar members submitted a proposal to turn the seminar into a group; unfortunately the program committee rejected the idea, so the seminar finished its five-year run and left the AAR without a programmatic home for discussion of religion in the American West.

As a temporary solution to this sad state of affairs, a group of us have put together the exciting new Initiative for Religion in the American West (IfRAW). Sponsored this year by the Religious Studies Department of the University of Wyoming, IfRAW will hold its first meeting on Saturday, November 23, from 10-12:30. (This gives you a chance to sleep in. You’re welcome.) There are three papers, which will be available on this site SOON, that we’ll discuss. Then we’ll have a business meeting and decide our strategy for the immediate future—ways to place sessions at other meetings, when and how (and if) to propose a program unit to the AAR again, how to shape the call for papers for our next annual meeting at the AAR.

What can you do?

First, read the papers (watch this space for instructions on getting them soon) and come to the meeting ready to discuss them. Bring a friend! Our session this year is called “Theorizing Religion from the American West.” Here’s the session description:

The Initiative for Religion in the American West invites all who are interested in the topic to attend our first annual session. This session takes up the task of conceptualizing religion and re-thinking the methods of religious study, taking the North American West as the point of departure rather than as the end result of western expansion. Three pre-circulated papers examine how a western regional vantage point alters how the category “religion” itself is defined, imagined, and academically employed in the study of North American religions. In addition to considering these “theories of religion of the American West,” the session also reflects on methods of study of religion that are suited to (and respond to) the study of religious people, practices, and institutions in the region. Papers will be made available online about one month before the session; please see the Religion in the American West blog or email Quincy Newell for more information. Paper authors will make brief presentations, followed by a response and extensive discussion among all attendees. The session will conclude with a brief business meeting to plan the future of the Initiative.

Presenters:

• Catherine Newell, University of Miami, “Myth and Religion in the American West”

• Sarah Moczygemba, University of Florida, “Cowboy Churches: Walking the Line between Myth and History”

• Seth Schemerhorn, Arizona State University, “Of Pilgrimage and Parody: Don Bahr’s Principle of ‘Parody’ and O’odham Methods and Theories of ‘Writing’ History and ‘Mapping’ Territory”

Respondent: Kristy Nabhan-Warren, University of Iowa

Second, help us get the word out about this session and about the initiative more generally. Bring a friend to the session! If you’ve been to past seminar sessions, and you thought they were worthwhile, tell people. Help us create some buzz.

Third, think about where you’d like to see this initiative go in the future. Send us your ideas in advance by emailing one of our current leadership team (Brandi Denison, Brett Hendrickson, Jim Bennett, and Quincy Newell). These might be ideas about strategies for getting a new program unit, or just ideas you’d like to see in the next CFP. Click here to read the IfRAW statement of purpose and get those creative juices flowing!

Fourth, if you happen to be in leadership for another AAR program unit, think about whether you’d like to co-sponsor a session with us. Since IfRAW is not an official AAR program unit, co-sponsoring won’t get you any additional sessions. But it will help advance the IfRAW cause, and we will gladly help in recruiting high-quality presenters and respondents.

Fifth, consider whether you’d like your institution to be a co-sponsor of the IfRAW. Additional Meetings cost money—not a lot, but some—and we need institutional sponsors. If you are interested in helping with this part, contact Quincy Newell for details.

We’ll have a round-up of other AAR sessions that might interest you coming soon. In the meantime, please be sure to mark this one on your calendar!!

Autry Museum and the challenge of displaying "convergence" in Western exhibits

Here is an article that may be of interest to many of you. Published yesterday in the New York Times, it addresses many of the challenges involved in presenting a revised portrait of the American West in museum displays. Journalist and critic Edward Rothstein presents a critique of the Autry National Center of the American West's efforts to reconfigure their exhibits and shift focus away from a "Wild West" narrative to one of "convergence," which, as their website explains, is "a way of seeing the evolving story of the American West as an interwoven tapestry of cultures and peoples." As Rothstein trenchantly observes, "The main difficulty has been in the interweaving."

Here is a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/arts/design/at-autry-national-center-in-los-angeles-histories-converge.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&adxnnlx=1379953227-89GNE8xZuNpl76mkGzmsnA

CFP: Religion in California conference

Editor's note: This call for papers may be of interest to many of you:

Religion in California

April 24-25, 2014

University of California, Berkeley

Call for Papers

We invite proposals for a symposium on “Religion in California” to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 2014. The symposium is co-sponsored by Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program (RPGP), the California American Studies Association (CASA), the Theological Engagement with California’s Culture Project (TECC), the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR), and Graduate Theological Union.

The symposium will feature a keynote discussion with Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton (author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America), Dr. Lois A. Lorentzen (co-editor of On the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana) and Rev. Dr. Joy Moore (Associate Dean of African American Church Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary).

We invite individual proposals that deal with any aspect of religion in California, but we are particularly interested in works that interact with the path breaking scholarship of Sutton and Lorentzen et. al. and/or theological features within the state. Proposals that focus upon some combination of immigration and movement, politics and social movements, and/or theology and culture will be preferred. Proposals should range from 250 to 1,000 words and will be considered through December 15, 2013. Selected participants will be notified by January 1, 2014.

The symposium will be relatively small with panels held on Friday, April 25. Participants will be expected to attend several selected panels and also participate in the opening keynote discussion on Thursday, April 24 and the closing conversation on Friday, April 25.

Please direct any questions and submit proposals to: Lynne Gerber (l.gerber@berkeley.edu), Edward J. Blum (eblum@mail.sdsu.edu), and/or Jason Sexton (Jason@teccproject.com).

http://www.isa-rc22.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RIC-cfp-poster.pdf

RIC-cfp-poster.pdf

Call for Papers

Editors' Note: This call might be of interest to those of you working on Catholicism in the American West.

U.S. Catholic Historian
Spring 2014 Issue: Saints in America

For more than thirty years U.S. Catholic Historian has published theme-based issues relevant to the history of American Catholicism.

An upcoming issue will assess the role of canonized saints or individuals on the path to sainthood (blesseds/servants of God) and the Catholic Church in America.

Contributions could include, but are not limited, to the following:

· Biographical studies of saints/blesseds/servants of God who ministered in the U.S.

· Studies of devotion to saints in the U.S. context

· Studies of the process of canonization for U.S. saints/blesseds/servants of God

Scholars considering a submission are asked to contact the editor, Fr. David Endres at DEndres@Catholic.orgDEndres@Catholic.org> before preparing a contribution. Approximate length is 7,000-10,000 words. We ask for submissions by March 1, 2014.

Protected: The New Westerns and AMC’s Hell on Wheels

by David McConeghy

Saturday, August 10th brings the Season 3 premiere of AMC’s original historical drama Hell on Wheels. To avoid spoiling the content for anyone who hasn’t found the time to enjoy the series, here is the premise:

Cullen Bohannan, a former soldier and slaveholder, follows the track of a band of Union soldiers, the killers of his wife. This brings him to the middle of one of the biggest projects in US history, the building of the transcontinental railroad. After the war years in the 1860s, this undertaking connected the prospering east with the still wild west.

I have to admit I am a sucker for historical dramas. I fell in love with HBO’s Romeand I’ve been equally enthralled with PBS’s Downton Abbey and Showtime’s The Tudors and The Borgias. Despite inevitable anachronisms and inaccuracies, I believe there’s an amazing service being done by these shows. They are soldiers on the front line of the battle for history’s relevance. They also, however self-servingly, make room for more academic roles in the creation and discussion of cultural material. As conduits for intense scrutiny–like the recent feature filmsLincoln or Django Unchained–they are something the academy desperately needs.

The American West has its own particular demons in this respect–partly because of how prolific the genre of western film and television has been. The 1950s and 1960s produced more Westerns than any other period in American film and television. As American historical products of the late Jim Crow era, not all of these have survived the test of time as cultural products worthy of continuous reinvestment. The 2010 remake of True Grit (1969), for instance, captures the spirit of the John Wayne original for a modern audience that would be unlikely to tolerate the older version’s pacing and production values. The differences between the two films are also an opportunity to imagine the (many) ways American media has changed its understanding and portrayal of the historical American West. Narrating the past inevitably reveals the present.

It’s in this respect that I direct readers to AMC’s Hell on Wheels. As history, it is certainly not perfect. Specialists would be concerned by its treatment of racial tensions among newly freed slaves, European and Asian immigrant laborers, and veterans of both sides of the Civil War. On the whole, however, I find it a revealing portrait of the Postbellum industrialization of the west. The tensions of the railroad camp–ethnic, social, religious–recall Susan Lee Johnson’s Roaring Camp with its captivating portrait of Stockton, CA during the Gold Rush. Some of the great costs of winning the west are laid bare. This can mean, as it should, a sometimes graphic experience. (Be warned that this is something shared by the majority of the recent cable TV historical dramas.)

That’s the role of all great drama, right? Bring out the light and dark of the past for those in the present. By the end of season 1 (available streaming on Netflix),Hell on Wheels has emphasized the confrontation of freedom and confinement, tradition and innovation, morality and depravity. The revenge narrative that structures the series gives ample opportunity to forge characters in the crucible of seemingly impersonal forces. The impurities that arise also reveal the ethos of the new westerns–more easily ready to wallow in the moral middle ground.

As a further instance of a growing body of new westerns worth watching, “Hell on Wheels” joins features like True Grit (2010). Rather than compile an exhaustive list of the last decade, I encourage you to look at the interestingly categorized list of western films on Wikipedia (that distinguishes among traditional, comedy, revisionist, and several other types of westerns). But on TV the star is surely has to be HBO’s Deadwood. It is consistently ranked as one of the best television series of the last decade. Its three seasons (2004-2006) brought life to the fledgling frontier town of Deadwood, South Dakota. It was also among the first truly successful historical dramas–proof for cable TV channels that original programming was profitable. If Hell on Wheels can do the same for railroad camps on the Great Plains, then we should welcome its contribution.