Professor Robert Baum, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Religion and the Department of African and African American Studies, has been elected to the American Society for the Study of Religion.
The national society of elected members advances the scholarly study of religion in its various forms. “I am honored to join a group of the leading scholars dedicated to the historical and comparative study of religions,” says Baum.
An expert in African religions, Baum is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books: Ancient African Religions: A History, which was published by Oxford University Press in September, offers the first comprehensive study of the earliest history of African religions. His 2020 book, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religon and Society in Precolonial Senegambia, won an American Academy of Religion award for the best first book in the history of religions. West Africa's Women of God: Alinesitoue and the Diola Prophetic Tradition, which was published in 2010, was a finalist for the Albert J. Raboteau Prize in Africana Religions.
Baum served as executive editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa for six years. Additionally, he played an extensive role in Difficult Dialogues, a program funded by the Ford Foundation which trained faculty at the University of Missouri and other Big Twelve universities in how to approach controversial issues that have a religious dimension in the university classroom. He has conducted similar workshops for K-12 teachers.
This month, Baum will travel to the University Assane Seck of Ziguinchor in southern Senegal to deliver the keynote address at a conference on Aline Sitoué Diatta, the Senegalese community leader who led resistance efforts against French colonial forces in the region known as French West Africa during World War II. The conference will take place 80 years after her death in a French internment camp in the present-day Republic of Mali.
Baum joins three fellow Dartmouth faculty members who were elected in previous years to the American Society for the Study of Religion: Ronald Green, Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor Emeritus for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in Religion; Susannah Heschel, Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies; and Shaul Magid, distinguished fellow in Jewish studies.