Regional Coordinator: Susan M. Maloney 4579 Ambrose Avenue #5 Los Angeles, CA 90027-1940 USA This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Region's Website

This is just a gentle reminder that the Western Regional meeting is fast approaching! You can now register online.

March 26–28, 2011
Whittier College
Whittier, CA, USA

The AAR Western Region meets with the Society of Biblical Literature’s Pacific Coast Region and the American Schools of Oriental Research’s Pacific Coast Region. These three organizations make up the Western Commission for the Study of Religion (WECSOR). For details see www.sjsu.edu/wecsor.

Conference Theme: Current Religious Thinking

Previous annual meeting themes have taught us what happens when we see our field through spacial and geographic metaphors. This year we invite members to conceive of religion and its study as complex and ongoing flows. Our substantive areas are not cut-and-dried; look closely and they dissolve into each other. And our methodologies, likewise, are not merely contiguous, but constantly interfuse, blend, and add their own cross-currents to others without end. Like Heraclitus's ever-new river, religion is the living water of life.

This year we encourage explorations that celebrate and critique religion’s myriad and ever-changing currents — that trace them to their sources and plumb their mixed and maybe muddied depths. We hope to address questions like “How do religions flow from region to region?,” “How have theology or ritual deepened when new tributaries flow into traditions?,” or “How do we dive into the waves caused when scholarly disciplines clash and trouble the waters of academe?”

Sections at the Regional Annual Meeting

• Buddhist Studies


• Ecology and Religion


• Education and Workshops


• Ethics


• Goddess Studies


• History of Christianity


• Indigenous Religions


• Islamic Studies


• Jewish Studies


• Latino/a and Latin American (U.S.)


• Nineteenth Century


• Philosophy of Religion


• Psychology, Culture, and Religion


• Queer Studies in Religion


• Religion and Social Sciences


• Religion and the Arts


• Religion in America


• Religion, Literature, and Film


• Religions of Asia


• Womanist/Pan-African


• Women and Religion