On the sad news of the passing of Saba Mahmood, the editorial board of the journal Sociology of Islam has decided to organize a special issue to honor the work and legacy of our distinguished colleague for the study of global politics and religion. Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work shifted debates on secularism and religion, gender and politics, the rights of religious minorities, and the impact of colonialism in the Middle East. Her conceptual engagement with these pertinent social and political issues, however, has opened up broader questions about the politics of religious difference in a secular age beyond the Middle East and Muslim majority countries. This special issue of Sociology of Islam intends to bring to the fore the scope of these contributions in order to assess the cross-disciplinary and trans-regional magnitude of her work.

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.

The recently established International Center for the Humanities and Social Change at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will fund dissertation fellows and postdoctoral scholars for the academic year 2017-2018. For more information or with any questions, visit the Center's website.

This is a call for applications for the 2017 UCSIA Summer School on “Religion, Culture, and Society: Entanglement and Confrontation." This summer school is a one-week course taking place from Sunday, August 27, 2017 until Saturday, September 2, 2017 at the University Center Saint-Ignatius Antwerp, University of Antwerp, Belgium. This year the program will focus on the topic "Between Market, State, and Religion: Economic Realities, Social Justice, and Faith Traditions." The UCSIA Summer School brings together a multidisciplinary and international group of 30 PhD students and postdoctoral scholars. Participation and stay for young scholars and researchers are free of charge, but participants should pay for their own travel expenses to Antwerp. You can submit your application via the electronic submission form on the summer school website. The completed file as well as all other required application documents must be submitted to the UCSIA selection committee no later than Sunday, May 14, 2017.