Please call the AAR at 1-404-727-3049.

You can confirm the AAR's hours of operation under "Office Hours" on the Contact Us page.

Membership dues are calculated automatically in the Online Dues System, and are printed on the membership forms, which you can find on the Joining or Renewing menu, or which you can have faxed to you by calling 1-404-727-3049. For convenience, however, the table of dues is reproduced below.

AAR dues are on a sliding scale based on income. Please refer to the chart below for specific rates:

Annual Income (in US Dollars) AAR Standard AAR Retired2 SBL Member Discount3 AAR Standard AAR Retired2,3 ≥ $120,000 $195 $156 $156 $117 ≥ $105,000 and < $120,000 $175 $140 $140 $105 ≥ $90,000 and < $105,000 $150 $120 $120 $90 ≥ $75,000 and < $90,000 $135 $108 $108 $81 ≥ $60,000 and < $75,000 $115 $92 $92 $69 ≥ $50,000 and < $60,000 $95 $76 $76 $57 ≥ $40,000 and < $50,000 $80 $64 $64 $48 ≥ $30,000 and < $40,000 $60 $48 $48 $35 ≥ $20,000 and < $30,000 $45 $36 $36 $27 < $20,000 $40 $32 $32 $26 < $15,000 (International Only) $15 $12 $12 $9 Student1 $30

1   Must provide a copy of current valid student ID and must have not already been a student member for 7 or more years. 2 Must be age 65 or older and must be retired from full-time employment. 3 Must also be a current member of the SBL. (SBL dues must be paid separately to SBL.)

When Scholars Press handled membership renewals for both organizations, it offered the convenience and economy of joining both organizations with the same payment. This was called a joint membership, and included a 20% discount on the cost of membership.

The AAR and SBL were then, and still are, separate organizations. With the dissolution of Scholars Press, each organization is managing its own membership services, and there is no structure in place to handle simultaneous membership applications to both entities. Thus, if you wish to join both AAR and SBL, you need to make separate applications. Information on AAR memberships, including online application, is available on this site in the Members section of the website. Information on SBL memberships can be found on the SBL site at http://www.sbl-site.org.

To avoid confusion, we have ceased using the phrase "joint membership," but the AAR and SBL continue to recognize a discount for regular members who are also members of the other organization.

The AAR revised its dues sturcture for 2007, but these changes were designed to simplify the structure. Except for the two new upper income tiers, in no income category did dues change by more than $10. And in most cases they went down or stayed the same. The following chart shows the previous dues structure along with the current dues category/categories for that income tier. The new rates are shaded to help you see at a glance whether they went up, stayed the same, or went down.

In the "My Account" section of the website (under the "Members" menu), select "Change Contact Information." You can also navigate to the page directly at http://www.aarweb.org/Members/My_Account/contact1.asp.

Current members can print a receipt immediately from the Your Renewal History page.

Please note, however, that membership applications and renewals (even those submitted online) are not reflected online until they are processed by our administrative staff. For this reason, you will not find information in "Your Renewal History" immediately after an online renewal, but it will appear there within a few days.

The online database is not the official database of the AAR. Rather – for security reasons – it is merely a subset of the official database containing information necessary for members to see some individualized information and to look up records in the online Membership Directory.

You will see your information updated online one day after it is processed into the official membership database (which stored on computers in the AAR executive offices). For online payments, update of the official database usually happens within three business days. For dues submitted by check on paper forms, it can take a couple of weeks. The online database is refreshed by an automatic procedure that is scheduled to run at about 3:30 AM Eastern Time every day.

If you are renewing online for the current calendar year, you will receive a temporary ID that will allow you access to several important members-only functions (e.g., Job Postings, Annual Meeting registration, the Membership Directory) while you wait for processing on your renewal to be completed.

We have an automated system of retrieving your member ID. If we have your e-mail address on file, you can retrieve your AAR member ID from the My Account page and the member ID will be sent by e-mail to that address. You should receive the ID by e-mail within a few minutes.

If this system does not work for you, please contact us at membership@aarweb.org or 1-404-727-3049 to get your member ID (and to make certain your e-mail address and other contact information is correct in our database). Please be certain to provide additional information to help us be certain that we have found the correct record, such as the address, phone numbers, or e-mail we have listed for you.

Membership renewal mailings are prepared on the schedule that our mailing services require; members unfamiliar with sending bulk mailing are often unaware of the lead time required in getting ready for communications of this sort. It is not uncommon for a month to pass between the time that an address list is sent to the mail house and the time that a mailing is delivered (longer for addresses outside the U.S.).

Obviously, the mailing will reflect the membership status on the date it was prepared, not on the date it was received. Thus, the member who has renewed after the mailing was prepared should still expect to receive the renewal notice.

You can check your membership status at any time by reviewing the My Account . (You will need to log in; if you have lost your member ID, please see the question on this page, "I don't remember my member ID. What now?")

If the Members-Only Menu does not reflect your correct membership status and it has been at least five days since you renewed, please call us at 1-404-727-3049.

For most online services (e.g., Job Postings, the Membership Directory, Annual Meeting registration) persons who join or renew online will have immediate access via a temporary ID that is provided on the confirmation page.

Persons who submit their membership forms by mail or fax will have access the day after the materials are processed; under most circumstances this processing will take less than a week – but at heavy renewal times (the beginning of the year, and the month after fall renewal notices are sent) it may take longer.

A notice will be sent, usually within a week, confirming the membership and providing the member ID.

Members will be placed on the mailing lists for the next issues of JAAR and Religious Studies News–AAR Edition. (But please note that if you join after materials have been provided to the mail house, but before the issue is placed in the mail, you will not receive that issue automatically; in this case, you will have to request it as a back issue.) As soon as the membership form is processed, members can request back issues of all publications using our Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials form.

Whenever you submit a membership application or renewal to the AAR, it takes a few days to process – even if it is submitted online. As a benefit to members who may be joining in the hope of getting immediate access to one service or another, we provide temporary IDs to members who pay their dues online for the current year. (You don't need a temporary ID if you are paying for next year.)

The temporary ID does not allow access to all members-only functions of the website – but it does allow access to some of the functions that our members desire with the most immediacy, notably Job Postings, the Membership Directory, and (at the appropriate times of year) Annual Meeting registration.

The temporary ID is good for twenty-one days, which will be enough time for the regular member ID to be assigned or reactivated.

Subscribers who arrange for Oxford University Press (OUP) journals directly through the publisher receive a subscriber number, which they can use for online access to the journal(s) to which they have subscribed. Therefore, when browsing the JAAR page on the OUP website, you may be prompted for a subscriber number.

Oxford University Press publishes the Journal of the AAR and sends it to AAR members, but AAR members do not receive individual subscriber numbers. Instead, AAR members have access to the JAAR information on the OUP website by logging in first, using their AAR member IDs, to the Oxford University Press – JAAR page on the AAR website.

If you do not know your AAR member ID, please see the question above, I don't remember my member ID. What now?

As is typical with learned societies, the AAR membership cycle follows the calendar year, no matter when the membership application is submitted. Printed membership forms indicate at the top that they are for the calendar year, and the online renewal system provides this information as well.

Because of the substantial discount for members in Annual Meeting registration, most people who are not yet members, but who wish to attend the Annual Meeting, find that it is advantageous to join – even in late November – in order to receive this discount. We make every effort to be certain they understand that the membership will expire on December 31, but invariably some Annual Meeting registrants forget and are surprised to receive a renewal letter soon after joining. We ask that they recall that this was a purposeful decision that saved them money at the time of Annual Meeting registration.

Please note that even if you are not joining at the beginning of the year, we make every effort to provide the full year's worth of benefits: Notably, you can go to the Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials page to request back issues of the Journal of the AAR and other publications you have missed (we make an effort to print a sufficient number of extra copies, but some supplies may run out) and you are eligible to attend the Annual Meeting at the fully discounted member rate (without having the discount prorated for your period of membership).

Even if you are not joining at the beginning of the year, we make every effort to provide the full year's worth of benefits: Notably, you can go to the Request Replacement of Undelivered Materials page to request back issues of the Journal of the AAR, Religious Studies News–AAR Edition, and other publications you have missed (we make an effort to print a sufficient number of extra copies, but some supplies may run out); you will have access to Job Postings without having to wait until the beginning of the year; and you will be able to attend the Annual Meeting at the fully discounted member rate, a discount which covers the cost of membership in most cases.

Some membership forms distributed in last few months of the year have two columns for the totals, one labeled for the current year, and the other labeled for the coming year. If you are not a current member (either never having joined, or having let your membership lapse) and write your totals in the column for the coming year, we apply your membership to that year.

Similarly, in late months of the year, the online renewal system is set to give you a choice of joining for the current year, the coming year, or both. If you join for the coming year, of course, then your membership does not become active until January 1 of that year.

If you intended to join for the current year, but accidentally indicated that your membership should be applied to the coming year, then we can change the year of the membership. Please note that such adjustments can only go in the direction of later years to earlier years, and not the reverse. Thus, we can reapply (to use an example from the past) 2001 to 2000 – but not 2000 to 2001.

We understand that some of our members find such questions offensive per se. We are further aware that some members who do not mind being asked about their ethnicity or gender are nonetheless dissatisfied by the limited range in the responses we make available. And, finally, we understand that some members feel that more than one response, or a more nuanced response, is appropriate to them.

The AAR in no way wishes to privilege any single ethnicity, or, indeed, any subset of ethnicities, nor to ignore an evolving understanding of gender. The information we gain from this field is used internally (and only internally) to help us analyze whether we are making adequate progress in reaching out to members and prospective members of diverse backgrounds. It is reviewed occasionally in aggregate (without individual names) in the Executive Offices and by AAR committees.

If we were creating the questions now, we would almost certainly frame them differently. But they have been used as currently worded for many years, and we do compare current percentages with percentages from the past. To change the structure of the question now would make such comparisons unreliable. While we may at some point re-structure it, such a course of action is, for this reason, not to be taken lightly.

We hope our members understand that the AAR is committed to diversity and that no response, or lack of response, to the demographic questions will shake us from that commitment.

We further hope our members understand that the demographic section is optional. Anyone who prefers not to answer for any reason may skip the section as a whole or skip any individual question(s) within it.

The easiest way to check your AAR region is to log in to the My Account page. Once logged in, you will find a "Your Membership Information" box near the top of the screen that will indicate your AAR region.

AAR members in the US and Canada are automatically assigned a region based on geographic location. Additionally, all members (including those outside the US and Canada) can specify regions for which they would like to receive mailings and communications irrespective of where they may live. (That is to say, a member in Toronto will automatically receive information from the Eastern International region, and may elect to receive information from the Mid-Atlantic and New England-Maritimes regions as well.) To make these arrangements, you can contact the region (contact information and a map of the regions can be found via the Regions page or by following the links to each region below) or the AAR (send e-mail to membership@aarweb.org or call 1-404-727-3049).