Registered for your Fall 2014 classes yet? There’s still room in some of the upper-level seminars…. Follow us on Twitter @StudyReligion […]
Month: May 2014
No Chili Peppers
There’s a bit of a controversy brewing in social media over a new review essay published in the our field’s main peer review periodical, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, on the book, On Teaching Religion, edited by Chris Lehrich and containing some of the writings on pedagogy by Jonathan Z. Smith. The reviewer, a onetime student of Smith’s, reflects on her own experience in his classes, as an undergrad at the University of Chicago in the late-1990s, in […]
Gotcha
Note to self: if you’re going to spin tales of origin in the service of contemporary interests then be careful, for someone with different interests can always tweak what you’re trying to do, to suit their own purposes. Case in point: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent effort to use an origins narrative to spin a tale of similarity quickly cut toward difference when the Pope corrected him on a detail, requiring some hasty fine tuning to get back to the […]
Embedded in Religion
What ideological positions are embedded within the practices and conceptions that we commonly identify as religions? Depending on one’s own ideological position and perspective, various people emphasize the patriarchy, ethnocentrism, and violence within various examples of religion. People will certainly debate if those ideological positions are typical in expressions of religion or an accretion to some idealized form. What about common definitions of what counts as religion? What ideological positions are embedded there? In classes I often emphasize the ways […]
Rant, Screed, or Valid Critique?
Dictionarily, the difference between a screed and a rant is the difference between written and oral discourse. What joins them together is a certain angry compulsion to “get the word out”, “wake up the lethargic” and/or, not without a certain brazenness, “right the wrong”. All-too-often, the words chosen are themselves hostile, and, rather than engaging the reader or listener, they serve to close the very doors they were originally intended, perhaps, to open. Not so with Professor Aaron Hughes’s latest […]
Dance with Beautiful Strangers
Looking for a kick-ass, take no hostages, graduation speech…? […]
Going Strong
We established the REL blog two years ago this summer, originally linked to our 2012-13 lecture series on the relevance of the humanities (hence the theme of many of our early posts) but then widened the lens considerably last summer, developing a faculty blog along with one for current students, grads, and even for guests. Overall, we’ve had 23,500 hits, with 599 being our best single day. We’ll be posting from the archives throughout the summer, and publishing new content […]
It’s in the Record Books
Yes, the year-end report for 2013-14 has been written, proofed, and sent to the Dean. So it’s in the record books now. It was another great year in REL: the newly inaugurated Day Lecture series; a new undergraduate research symposium established; new faculty members coming on board and even hired for the coming year; four grads returned to talk about the relevance of their degrees; the Manly Cup Kick-ball Megabowl…; more Vimeo videos featuring some wonderful students, both new and […]
Studying Religion and…
The third installment of our “Studying Religion and…” video series is ready to roll! This album showcases the range of interests of our students and professors. The newest video, “Wonderin’ Where Our Majors Are…,” features many of our current double majors, and even a few triple majors. While you’re watching this one, take a look back at the others in the album and you’ll see that we live by our motto of studying religion in culture… all across culture. Wonderin’ […]
Criss-Cross
Big things are happening at REL this summer, including some moving. In case you haven’t already heard, Prof. Mike Altman and Prof. Sarah Rollens have criss-crossed (although, thankfully, not in true Hitchcock fashion) offices. Prof. Altman’s office is now on the second floor and Prof. Rollens has moved upstairs to the penthouse with the great view. In the game of musical offices, you grab the one closest to you when the music stops. […]