Biography
Cynthia A. Hogan is a historian of religion with particular research interests in the intersections of material culture, museums, and religion. She earned her first M.A. in ancient history with a minor in ancient religion at North Carolina State University while working full-time as a museum educator at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Hogan then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study religion and culture, earning a second M.A., focusing on how twentieth-century author Charles Williams conceptualized sacred objects in his three talisman novels. Her doctoral dissertation “The Art of Religion: Aestheticizing Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Religious Artifacts” examined the ways that sacred religious material culture is culturally cultivated and ideologically reinvented as objects of fine art and exhibited as such in fine arts museums. Hogan’s current research involves the visual and material culture of modern metaphysical traditions. Hogan has served on several ad hoc committees for the AAR and has nearly a decade of experience working with the AAR Regions, collaboratively and serving on the Executive Board of the EIR.
Candidate Statement
There is no doubt that for the uninitiated attending the AAR Annual Meeting can be daunting, confusing, and downright unsettling. I attended my first AAR Annual Meeting as a second-year master’s student giving my first academic paper on the artist McKendree Robbins Long’s visionary paintings of the Book of Revelation. I remember how intimidated I felt – and also how awed. The experience was fantastic. As a financially challenged graduate student, however, it was also immensely expensive. Shortly thereafter, I began attending the AAR-SE conferences since I was studying at UNC-Chapel Hill and enjoying the camaraderie of several fellow graduate students also presenting there. Twists of fate and a few years later, I found myself back in the Finger Lakes Region of New York while finishing up my doctoral dissertation. From my family’s home, it was just a quick drive to Syracuse University, and I was fortunate enough to have had a paper accepted for the 2014 EIR conference. This was the start of a long, rewarding connection with the students and scholars of the EIR. I was first elected as Secretary to the Board and served two terms in that role before being elected as Regional Coordinator (REC) for two terms.
During my time on the EIR’s Board, I was deeply engaged in regional concerns and issues. I know firsthand the difficulties of the academic job market for scholars of religion; the many challenges and crises contingent faculty face, and the essential need for scholars of religion to engage with a public who often misunderstands our roles, our fields, and our missions. As teachers, students, and scholars, we have no shortage of issues ahead of us at this critical national and global moment. Attacks on academic freedoms, political interference in institutions of higher education, and an ever-growing shift away from traditional tenure are only some of the issues we face as an academic guild. As Regions Director, I would bring a commitment to service and collaborative leadership to build up our regional, national, and international communities, aim to move our profession forward in ways that would benefit current and future members, and strive to ensure that the AAR’s mission and values are upheld.