Mountains and Sacred Landscapes Conference Report

by Issrnc Admin · Published May 23, 2017 · Updated May 23, 2017

Dear ISSRNC members,

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the ISSRNC, I want to convey our thanks to all of you who attended our conference on “Mountains and Sacred Landscapes”! A special thanks to those who served as presiders and discussants. We had 225 attendees from over 25 countries (every continent was represented [except Antarctica!]), 39 sessions of panels, papers, roundtables, and alternative formats, six keynote or plenary sessions, and other special events.

For those of you who were unable to join us, some of the conference highlights included our banquet, during which we celebrated Bron Taylor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, with a moving talk by Taylor about his career and the early roots of the ISSRNC, and launched our first student paper award, which went to Lily Zeng for her paper, Problematizing Ideas of “Purity” and “Timelessness” in the Conservation Narratives of Sacred Groves; a field trip to the Rubin Museum for presentations by curators on “Sacred Landscapes in the Himalayas”; a book launch featuring three new books (monographs by James Miller and Georgina Drew and a collection of essays edited by ICI Fellows Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, Sanjay Chaturvedi, and Dong Shikui); and six keynotes, performances, or plenary sessions featuring Karenna Gore, Edwin Bernbaum, David Rothenberg, Gregory Cajete, and Steve Paulson, as well as the India China Institute’s Sacred Himalaya Initiative.

We ask that if you attended the conference in New York, please respond to a short survey about your experience, which will help us improve our conferences and our service to members more generally. The survey can be found at: https://form.jotform.us/71155654799167

Many thanks in advance for taking time to complete the survey.

The Journal for the Society of Religion, Nature, and Culture (JSRNC) would like to extend an invitation to all of our presenters to submit their work to the journal for peer review. Please go to our website and read about our submission guidelines and review process. https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JSRNC

We are pleased to announce that our new website, which we previewed in New York, launched on May 25 and will have a number of member engagement and networking features. We will include some highlights from the conference on the new website, such as photographs, and will invite you to send us your conference papers for posting online, if you wish to do so.

Finally, we urge you to get involved with the Society through our working groups and committees. For more information on working groups, please contact ISSRNC President-elect Mark Peterson () and Board member Elaine Nogueira-Godsey (). Our current working groups are as follows: Ecology and Critical Theory, Teaching Methodologies and Pedagogies, Ecology and Gender, Ecology and Philosophy, and Ritual, Religion, and Nature. We hope to soon add a group on religion, nature, and the arts.

Finally, if you would like to volunteer to be on one of our committees, please contact the relevant person to express your interest: Awards (Amanda Baugh, ), Student Affairs (Amanda Nichols, and Chris Crews, ), Press and Media (Whitney Bauman, ), JSRNC (Luke Johnston, ), Development (Kristina Tiedje, and Anna Gade, ), Social Media and Communications (Evan Berry, and Amanda Nichols).