Month: May 2016


Lecture on Evolution & Religion

On March 31, Dr. William Lee McCorkle presented his research as part of the Alabama Lectures on Life’s Evolution (ALLELE) series, sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences. His lecture, titled “Religion, a Cultural Virus,” offered a crash-course on the academic study of religion and focused on the advantages of an evolutionary theory of religion, as well as highlighting his work at LEVYNA, the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion, which he helped to establish. […]

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Narrative Constructs Culture

Micah Davis is a graduate of the University of Alabama who majored in Religious Studies and Philosophy. He is interested in ethics and social theory. The following was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. REL 360 is the Department’s one-credit hour course that shows four films focusing on religion in pop culture throughout the semester. What do the Jewish Bible, the stories of Jesus, and movies have in common? They are all story-driven. The stories found in these different […]

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The 14th Annual Aronov Lecture

Back in March, Dr. Eddie Glaude, the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University (and incoming President of the American Academy of Religion [AAR]), presented his lecture, titled “Democracy in Black: The Value Gap,” as the Religious Studies Department’s 14th annual Aronov Lecture. (Learn more about this annual lecture series.) Did you miss it? Not to worry! You can follow the link below or watch it here. Our thanks to Caity Walker and Jared […]

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Tales from the Secondary Classroom: Discovering Normative Vocabulary

By Kim Davis Kim earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and French from the University of Alabama in 2003. She went on to earn her Masters in French Linguistics and Literature in 2007 and a Masters in Secondary Language Pedagogy in 2010, both from UA. Kim now teaches French and Mythology at Tuscaloosa County High School. A while back, I wrote about how an early morning Culture on the Edge Facebook post and subsequent conversation with one of its members helped me […]

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Rethinking Public Religion

Lately I’ve been getting emails about a summer school on the topic of public religion — specifically, on “how different forms of religion and religiosity meander through social realities today.” Like the problematic notion of material religion (critiqued here), the idea that religions can be either private and public is a troublesome one that we seem not to be able to get beyond. It’s a notion given significant steam about 20 years ago with the publication of the book pictured […]

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Imagination, Morality, and the Value Gap

Bethany Scott is a freshman at the University of Alabama with a major in Human Performance Exercise Science, with a focus on Nutrition on a Pre- PA track. She graduated High School in Augusta, Georgia, but as a military kid she was able to travel and live in many different countries. This post was written as part of REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. Everyone knows that as your age increases imagination decreases, but one question that comes to mind is, […]

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Report from the Public Universities Chairs Workshop

Dr. Kevin Schilbrack (pictured above, right) is a professor of Religious Studies and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University. He was recently at the University of Alabama for the inaugural workshop for public university Religious Studies department chairs and offers the following report. Like many other department chairs, I suspect, I became chair after years of teaching, writing, and generally being collegial – but I received little or no training on how to be […]

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The End is Here and Brings Big Things

The semester is complete, and our seniors have walked across that stage. All semester I have had the privilege of working with the Capstone Senior Seminar, applying questions and ideas from our work to a broad range of topics and presenting them through various social media, from Twitter to Tumblr. Their final Digital Projects are now published, so you should take a look at the range of their creative approaches to expressing the significance of critical questions to many topics, […]

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10 Things I Learned at the REL Film Studios

Russell McCutcheon wrote a post on this blog recently in which he talked about the history and development of our filmmaking ventures here at REL, and as a student worker heavily involved in producing the films, I felt the need to respond to his post. For about two years now I’ve been planning, directing, filming, and editing our department’s videos, with some help from Andie of course, and the process came with a bit of a learning curve. So now, as I […]

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