Month: December 2016


Whose Loss is it Anyway?

Rebekka King is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research focuses on the negotiation of boundaries within North American Christianity. She teaches course on Method and Theory, Anthropology of Religion, and Contemporary Christianity. 2016 was the year of the loser. The more you lost, the better you were, especially if you shared it on Facebook. “I have all of David Bowie’s albums in vinyl. I’m going to post a picture of my collection.” “I […]

Read More from Whose Loss is it Anyway?

Jim and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

In the close to Fabricating Origins — a recent collection of short essays, by a wide array of scholars, on the problem of origins — I used the example of Jim and Pam, from the U.S. adaptation of the British series, “The Office,” to illustrate how malleable, and thus useful, the archive of the past can be in our efforts to make sense of where we happen to find ourselves today. For all I know I’ve blogged about it before […]

Read More from Jim and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Make It So

Did you catch Titus Hjelm‘s excellent post the other day? His argument concerned the manner in which otherwise routine claims or actions are represented by specific groups, for specific reasons, as controversial; the apparent controversy of some religions (notably, in his post, Islam — at least to a number of people in so-called Western countries) is thus not an essential trait but one that is acquired in the public marketplace. […]

Read More from Make It So

Thinking About Democracy After Citizenfour

Matthew McCullough is a Junior from Huntsville, AL majoring in Religious Studies and Political Science. The following was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities.  In a time when technology is more integral to our communication than ever, it is interesting how often people overlook the fact that as we become more immersed in technology, our private life inherently becomes more embedded in it as well. Sure, we may use a pin number to unlock a cell phone or a password […]

Read More from Thinking About Democracy After Citizenfour

Research Responsibilities Revisited

Some may recall a series of posts from the summer of 2015, on what I saw as the shortcomings of a draft statement of the American Academy of Religion on their members’ research responsibilities. Their draft document was then the basis for a session at the AAR’s 2015 annual meeting, in Atlanta that year, and a final version of the document was then produced and passed, early in 2016, by the AAR Board. Until recently I wasn’t aware of where […]

Read More from Research Responsibilities Revisited