As the Faculty Technology Liaison to the College of Arts and Sciences at UA, I am part of a Mac Administrators forum. I was surprised to notice the exclusion of deities from emoji eligibility while glancing over an update notice. After some investigation, I was surprised to learn about the selection factors of the Unicode Consortium. In fact, the Unicode Consortium has produced a very detailed report, “Emoji and Symbol Additions – Religious Symbols and Structures,” for which “The objective has been […]
Month: October 2015
Explaining Nags, Witches, and Evil Stepmothers
Did you hear the radio story this morning on folklorists attempting to explain why, all across culture, old women so often appear as evil characters in fairy tales and myths…? […]
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Sita Sings the Universal Blues
by Jared Powell Jared Powell is a senior from Canton, Mississippi majoring in English and Religious Studies. This post was originally written for Steven Ramey’s REL 419 class. Any college student would agree that the last thing we need is another Netflix suggestion to distract us from our studies… but that is exactly what I’m going to offer. Put down your English readings, forget about that MathLab assignment, and–dare I say it–skip the football game and watch Sita Sings the Blues. […]
It is Borders that Divide Us, as well as Our Ability to Recognize Them
Last week’s conclusion of the Canadian federal election marks another milestone in the exercise of democracy. Ballots were cast. A new party obtained a majority (of seats). The election is now over. I did not take part in that election. Despite being a Canadian citizen, I live outside the borders of the country, and I do not plan on moving back at a definite time in the future. Therefore, at least according to my reading, I am ineligible to participate […]
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The Sociology of Individuals
My REL 245 course presses on and now we’re about to tackle Craig Martin’s Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie. So I’ve got some weekend reading to do. The course is asking whether the study of religion ought to be founded on the assumption that the public, observable, material elements of religious life are but secondary manifestations of prior immaterial things — usually called beliefs, experiences, feelings, meanings, etc. Calling this common assumption into question is a […]
“It’s Absolutely Essential That You Continue, Teacher…”
The other day, my REL 245 class, concerned with investigating some of the background assumptions that make it possible for many scholars today to study religion in America in terms of choice — as if religious consumers are shopping in a competitive spiritual marketplace — took a look at Stanley Milgram’s famous series of psychology experiments; dating from the early 1906s, this series of experiments examined the role authority plays in human action and decision-making. […]
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The Tremendous Irony of it All
Last week there was some chatter online about the nominations put forward for the leadership of our field’s main professional association. (Question: why does the nominating committee exercise a monopoly on determining the organization’s leadership?) Apart from a variety of posts on Facebook and Twitter, the blogs I saw were those by Mike Altman, Aaron Hughes, Finbarr Curtis, and Elesha Coffman. They’re all well worth reading. The issue, for some, seems to be that the VP nominees are both Christian […]
Weaving the Thread of Oregon’s Origins
By Jared Powell Jared Powell is a senior from Canton, Mississippi majoring in English and Religious Studies If you follow college football, like most folks around here do, then you’ve surely heard a thing or two about the Oregon Ducks. Oregon has carved their place as one of the most successful college teams of the past five years with an imagined rivalry with the Tide (“We want Bama” anyone?), but they also make waves week in and week out with their […]
Why Good Looks Matter
Veikko Anttonen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at the University of Turku, Finland. He was elected Vice-President of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) for the period 2015-2020 at the conference in Erfurt last August. He was the Professor and Chair of Comparative Religion at the University of Turku between 1997-2015. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, stated in an interview that a successor to his post can be a woman if she is good looking, […]
3 Things You Should Do During #RELWeek
The College of Arts and Sciences is all about REL this week. That’s right, it’s #RELWeek. What does that mean? It means that A&S will be featuring REL on its social media accounts all week as part of its All About A&S campaign. So, here are three things you can do to celebrate #RELWeek 1. Follow us on Instagram. Just think about it. #RELWeek #AllAboutAS A photo posted by UA Dept. of Religious Studies (@studyreligion) on Oct 6, 2015 at 7:20am […]