Biography
Sarah H. Jacoby is professor and chair of the Religious Studies Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She specializes in Buddhist studies, with research interests in Tibetan Buddhist revelation, religious auto/biography, Tibetan literature, gender and sexuality, translation studies, relational ontologies, and the more than human. She is the author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (CUP, 2014), co-author of Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (OUP, 2014; 2025), and co-editor of Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas (Brill, 2009). Her newest book is an annotated translation titled Sera Khandro: Autobiography of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary (CUP, expected Dec. 2026). She teaches courses about Buddhism, feminist theory, and environmental humanities for students entering college through completing doctorates.
Candidate Statement
The humanities have been in peril for as long as I’ve been dedicated to them, but never before have the pressures of humanities-related education and career opportunities reached this level. Economic and political factors have led to decreasing numbers of students majoring in religious studies and reduced numbers of faculty positions in religious studies departments even as the critical importance of religion as a force shaping human conditions and futures becomes increasingly evident. There may be fewer religious studies majors these days, but high enrollments in many undergraduate religious studies classes prove the impact of our classes on students’ lives. Students are hungry for meaning, purpose, and direction in this time of instability. With glaciers crashing apart, wildfires raging, political extremism, and A.I. technology threatening human labor and security, the American Academy of Religion provides a critical forum for the generation of historical, theological, sociological, political, and literary knowledge about the world’s religious traditions.
The At-Large Director position for which I have been nominated represents the needs and interests of the general AAR membership to the Board of Directors. Crucial to this role is actively listening to AAR members and being receptive to a wide array of different facets and demographics of the AAR. I pledge to listen attentively to AAR members’ objectives and accurately represent them to the Board. In doing this work, I draw from twenty-five years of experience as regular AAR member, a decade as an editorial board member of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, eight years as a steering committee member of two different units (THRU and Buddhism), six years as the co-chair of the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Unit, four years as a member of the AAR Committee on Teaching and Learning, four years as co-editor of the “Spotlight on Teaching” column of Religious Studies News, and most recently three years as a member of the AAR’s Program Committee. All of these roles at the AAR have provided me with a variety of vantage points on what the AAR does, how it works best, and what it can become. If elected, I seek to enhance the impact of the AAR and the study of religion it promotes for the betterment of human and more-than-human flourishing in this time of manifold dangers.