2016 Program Committee Proceedings

American Academy of Religion Program Committee Meeting
Atlanta, Georgia • January 15–17, 2016

Program Committee Roster
2015 Annual Meeting Report
2016 Annual Meeting Program and Reviews
Other Business
Committee Deliberation of Program Unit Reviews
Proposals for New Program Units
Tools Used in the Program Committee's Evaluation Processes

Program Committee Roster

	Greg Johnson University of Colorado Program Committee Chair 2014–2016		Grace Ji-Sun Kim Earlham College 2016–2018
	Whitney Bauman Florida International University 2013–2017		Kathryn McClymond Georgia State University 2013–2017
	Julie Byrne Hofstra University 2016–2020		Najeeba Syeed-Miller Claremont School of Theology 2016–2020
	Martha Finch Missouri State University 2015–2019		Linda Thomas Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago 2014–2018
	Shreena Gandhi Kalamazoo College 2014–2018		Jack Fitzmier AAR Executive Director
	Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado University of Miami 2015–2019		Robert Puckett AAR Director of Meetings
	David Gushee Mercer University 2016		Kathleen McMahan AAR Administrative Assistant
	Tao Jiang Rutgers University 2016–2020

 2015 Annual Meeting Report

2015 Post-Annual Meeting Survey Narrative

2015 Post-Annual Meeting Survey Results

2016 Annual Meeting Program and Reviews

Program Unit Chair Changes

Approving 2016 Call for Papers

Brainstorming 2016 Reviewers and assigning Lead Readers

Other Business

A. Consideration of Special Requests from Program Units

B. Extra session for mentoring

C. Review of two clusters and discussion of expanding cluster experiment

E. Results of new schedule survey (83% in favor) – working on implementation for 2017

G. Nominating candidates for next Program Unit Director

H. PAPERS revamp

I. Related Scholarly Organizations (RSOs) renewal applications and review procedures

Committee Deliberation of Program Unit Reviews

Proposals for New Program Units

Tools Used in the Program Committee's Evaluation Processes

A. Program Unit’s Annual Reports

B. Program Unit’s Five-year Self Review

This document states the aims of the unit, its procedures, its programming accomplishments, and a rationale for the unit’s continued existence. Among the criteria deemed relevant to the self-review include:

1. The extent to which the field of interest represented by the unit continues to reflect a major area of interest and work for a significant portion of the Academy's membership; one possible metric by which this may be measured is the number and quality of proposals the unit receives.
2. The intellectual rigor, imagination, conceptual richness, and distinction of the work carried on by the unit, whether through the presentation of papers, the sponsorship of discussions, or the publication of proceedings.
3. The degree of commitment that the unit's constituency exhibits to the ongoing life of the unit; one possible metric by which this may be measured is the attendance at the unit’s Annual Meeting sessions.
4. The procedural health of the unit, including leadership practices, such as mechanisms for selecting new chairs and steering committee members; communication within the unit, between units, and with the AAR; and the unit’s proposal review process and other decision making practices.
5. The extent to which the unit's constituency has been afforded an opportunity to participate in the sessions (with attention to diversity of seniority, race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender among participants).
6. The unit's range of appeal to those members of the Academy whose own fields of specialization do not typically fall within the field of interest represented by the unit and the unit's ability to involve such people periodically in its programs; one possible metric by which this may be measured is the number of sessions which the unit cosponsors with other Program Units.
7. Over the course of the next five years, the promise the unit offers for advancing the academic study of religion, or the relation of that study to other disciplines.

C. External Reviewer Reports (if applicable)

If a Unit requests a change of status, additional sessions, requests an external review, or if the Program Committee, after its examination of the Program Unit’s metrics or Program Unit’s self-review, decides to follow-up with an external review, a reviewer will be selected by the Program Committee. Efforts are made to locate a member who has expertise in the field and who is able to play the role of participant-observer in the unit’s review.

The reviewer’s written report, is based on

1. attending as many sessions of the unit as possible during the Annual Meeting, including the unit’s business meeting(s);
2. personal interviews with the unit chairs, members of the steering committee and a cross-section of participants at Annual Meetings both current and previous (if that can be arranged); and
3. the unit’s written self-review.

D. Special consideration of creative sessions, strategies, experiments

E. Quantitative data collected in connection with the Annual Meeting

Some of this data is derived from the PAPERS System, but also from the Annual Reports (see graphs here for data on Proposals, Sessions, Attendance, Acceptances, Selectivity, Proposal Ratio, Cosponsorships, and Collaborativity).