2013 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion
The Society for the Anthropology of Religion would like to announce our annual juried competition for the Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. The Geertz Prize seeks to encourage excellence in the anthropology of religion by recognizing an outstanding recent book in the field. The prize is named in honor of the late Professor Clifford Geertz, in recognition of his many distinguished contributions to the anthropological study of religion. In awarding the Prize, the Society hopes to foster innovative scholarship, the integration of theory with ethnography, and the connection of the anthropology of religion to the larger world.
Any single-authored or co-authored book focusing on the anthropology of religion, broadly defined, is eligible for the Prize. Edited volumes, textbooks, and reference works are not eligible, nor are works in which religion is a secondary subject. The book’s author need not be an anthropologist by profession, but the work should draw on and respond to research and theory within the anthropology of religion. Books must have a publication date of 2011 or later. Books that have already been reviewed for the Prize will not be reconsidered. Books may be entered into the competition by authors, book editors, or colleagues. No formal letter of nomination is needed.
The prize will be awarded at SAR’s Business Meeting at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in November, 2013.
To submit a book for consideration, please send six (6) copies to the following address by March 31, 2013:
Lauren Leve
Chair, Geertz Prize Committee
Department of Religious Studies
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
125 Saunders Hall; CB #3225
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3225
Recent Recipients of the Geertz Prize
2012. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China (Duke University Press, 2010) by Julie Chu.
2011. Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2011) by Amira Mittermaier.
2010. The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenyan Coast (Duke University Press, 2009) by Janet McIntosh.
2009. Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Richard Price.
2008. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church (University of California Press, 2007) by Matthew Engelke.
2007. After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai (University of California Press, 2006) by Heonik Kwon.
Recent Geertz Prize Honorable Mentions
2012. Stambeli: Music, Trance and Alterity in Tunisia (University of Chicago Press, 2010), by Richard C. Jankowsky.
2010. The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals (Cornell University Press, 2009) by Douglas Rogers.