Although dating to 1932, in 2016-17 we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary, given how the Department was reinvented in 1966-7 — in keeping with how the study of religion was established then across public universities in the US. No longer confessionally-oriented and staffed by campus ministers, it became a cross-culturally comparative and interdisciplinary field. So all semester we’ll be posting some weekly fun facts from 1966 — not that long ago for some of us yet ancient history for others. […]
Month: January 2017
Faculty Reading Group: Transitions
On page 117, in the essay entitled “Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination,” we read the following: But if my hypothesis is correct, there can be no such thing as a non-relativistic representation of historical reality, inasmuch as every account of the past is mediated by the language-mode in which the historian casts his original description of the historical field prior to any analysis, explanation, or interpretation he may offer of it. We read this classic Hayden White piece (originally […]
“My Excitin’ Life”
That’s an historic picture — you can tell by the hair, the typewriter, and, yes, the size of the collar — that ran on the Fall 1994 front page of Samsara, what was then the annual newsletter of the University of Tennessee’s Department of Religious Studies (see the issue here and 1993’s here); it ran along with an article entitled “A Report from the Head.” Charlie Reynolds (1938-2017), who earned his Ph.D. in religious ethics from Harvard in 1968 and […]
Readying the Ground for Us
I’ve got some plants in my office that William Doty gave me back in 2001. Peace lilies. I was thinking about that yesterday, during a memorial service for William (who passed away on January 2, 2017, at the age of 77), at which people said some kind words and told a few stories — some of which were about his passion for cooking and, yes, gardening. When I moved into my new office, here in historic Manly Hall (once belonging […]
New Media (and) Ritual
Travis Cooper is a PhD candidate in anthropology and religious studies at Indiana University. His research interests include method and theory in the study of religion, discourse analysis, social media, critical ethnography, digital anthropology, and social theory. He’s currently dissertating on the boundary maintenance strategies of emerging evangelical communities after the New Media turn. I recently read and re-read Connor Wood’s post, “Social Media is Toxic. Religious Studies Tells Us Why,” and found my initially troubled impressions confirmed. Wood’s account of […]
Meet our Peer Mentors
This semester the Department of Religious Studies is proud to announce that we have teamed up with several students from various departments across campus to form our inaugural Peer Mentor Program (coordinated by Professor Touna). Because these students excelled in their REL Core course last semester, they will be available to help students in two of our survey courses this semester: REL 100 (sections 001 and 002) and REL 102. […]
50th Anniversary Fun Fact #3
Although dating to 1932, in 2016-17 we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary, given how the Department was reinvented in 1966-7 — in keeping with how the study of religion was established then across public universities in the US. No longer confessionally-oriented and staffed by campus ministers, it became a cross-culturally comparative and interdisciplinary field. So all semester we’ll be posting some weekly fun facts from 1966 — not that long ago for some of us yet ancient history for others. […]
REL 360 Presents: The Gods Must Be Crazy
REL 360–our one credit hour course–will be showing the 1980s comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy. After a glass Coca-Cola bottle is thrown from a passing plane into Kalahari bushmen territory, the supposed gift from the gods soon turns the tribe against one another, (since there is only one glass bottle to go around). Xi, the film’s protagonist, takes it upon himself to travel to the ends of the earth to dispose of the ludicrous gift and finds himself in an assortment […]
REL 360 Movie Night: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
REL 360, our one credit hour course, is kicking off the spring semester by showing O Brother, Where Art Thou? The film (which has been compared to Homer’s The Odyssey) is set in the deep South during the Depression-era and follows the antics of three escaped convicts on their quest to avoid the law and return home. […]
Read More from REL 360 Movie Night: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
50 Things for 50 Years
To commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Department of Religious Studies, we’ve put together a video of fifty different things REL has been up to over the years. We sure do have a lot going on around Manly Hall, and our majors and minors help to make a lot of that possible. It’s been a great fifty years, and here’s to fifty more! Take a look at what we have going on, and we hope to see you around the […]