End of Year Wrap-Up 2015

2015 is coming to a close and here’s where the JRC currently stands:

Our Office

Our office has recovered from the robbery. It’s been cleaned up and looking better than ever before. Sometimes good things can come from tragedy, even if those good things simply mean that we now have more shelf space and didn’t have to feel guilty about tossing old files.

On a related note, most of the editors will be away from the office and unlikely to answer emails very frequently until January 2016.

Book Donations

The JRC has also donated close to a dozen books to Concordia’s Webster Library. Any books which were already found in their collection will be given to the local student-run Book Coop and sold for very little (with the proceeds going to the Coop). Many of these monographs were older review copies which had never been claimed by their reviewers, or were simply lost in the shuffle from a previous editorial team. We hope they find more use in the hands of students.

JRC Volume 26 – Sexed Gender

We are in the process of finalizing our publication slate for No.1 of Vol. 26 of the JRC. A number of factors have delayed our affairs around the office and caused us to miss our initial launch date of first week of December 2015.

We will be launching the first half of the volume online first. We are aiming to have this done over the Holidays, but may still have to push the launch to January.

No. 2 will continue the process in January and into February with the aim of publishing online by end of March 2016.

We still anticipate releasing a print volume this year and have decided, in order to reduce printing costs, to print both parts of the volume together. The print edition is currently slated to be available April 2016.

AGIC 2016

The JRC will once again be on site for this year’s Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference hosted by Concordia’s Graduate Students of Religion Association. The conference topic will coincide with our most recent CFP for Sexed Religion, and we hope to see many of you there.

We should note that the AGIC is still accepting paper abstracts.

Robbery at the JRC

Dear readers, editors and other supporters of the JRC,

This announcement comes with great dismay. The staff of the JRC has to unhappily report that there has been a break-in at the Concorida Religion Annex located at 2050 Mackay resulting in the vandalism of the JRC office along with the robbery of numerous belongings and office supplies.

As far as we can ascertain, the thieves entered the building sometime over the weekend of November 14th, and entered into two rooms on the third floor. One room was relatively untouched, while our office bore the brunt of the vandalism. Neither the front door to the annex nor any of the doors inside were pried open, leaving us to believe that the perpetrator(s) used a key to enter the building.

Apart from the wanton destruction of much of our marketing material and the scattering of our paper records, two laptops, three toner cartridges, a credit card, batteries, gym bags and everything else which was deemed to be of worth, and easily portable (our massive printer was fortunately saved) have been stolen. At this moment the total loss of property appears to exceed $1000.00 – and likely even more if we were to factor in the full original price on the laptops.

The JRC will press ahead despite this great loss to our finances, workspace and morale. We can only hope that Concordia University’s security staff will continue investigating this incident and implement improved security measures for the future as break-ins have been known to happen in the past in this annex.

In light of these events, we apologize in advance for any further delays in communication and alterations to our publication schedule.