"Contextualizing the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis" is a five-year seminar of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) working towards greater understanding about clergy sexual abuse and the range of questions that it raises. The inaugural call for papers for the 2019 AAR Annual Meeting (November 23 - 26, San Diego, CA) is pasted below. Proposals should be submitted via the online PAPERS portal by the AAR deadline of Monday, March 4.

The Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship on the study of Islam and Muslims in Canada. This postdoctoral fellow will be primarily responsible for pursuing independent scholarship and research on the study of Islam and Muslims in Canada. The postdoctoral fellow would also organize a monthly research-oriented workshop on the central theme; and support Institute research incubation on the central theme. Closing date for applications: October 1, 2018.

On March 10, 2018, University of California-Berkeley anthropologist Saba Mahmood died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Mahmood, a former member of the editorial board of The Immanent Frame and longtime contributor, was a prominent scholar in the study of secularism, feminist theory, ethics, and the politics of religious freedom. Her first book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject won the Victoria Schuck Award from the American Political Science Association. ... Saba Mahmood changed the course of scholarship on religion and secularism. The editors of TIF, the editorial board, and TIF’s many contributors are grateful for her ground-breaking work, and saddened by this tremendous loss to us all as an intellectual community.

The Institute of Buddhist Studies, with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, invites proposals from scholars across the academic disciplines specializing in any religious traditions, theologians from all religious traditions, and professional journalists, to participate in a three-year research and journalism initiative and series of meetings addressing the impacts of technologies on human relationships. The deadline for proposals is May 7, 2018. More information can be found below or on the initiative's website.

The Secularism and Secularity Unit of the American Academy of Religion explores a broad a set of questions associated with the secular, including its complex entanglements with religion and spirituality. This is a call for proposals for the 2018 AAR conference to be held November 17-20, 2018 in Denver, Colorado. Submissions are due online by March 1, 2018 at 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.