Allison Isidore is a second-year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies. Have you seen the new HBO show “Lovecraft Country”? In the series premiere, set in 1950s America, we follow Atticus Freeman (played by Jonathan Majors), Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance) as they travel to “Ardham,” Massachusetts, in hopes of finding Atticus’s father, Montrose Freeman (Michael K. Williams). He went missing while searching for the family’s history. The trio drives through town […]
Tag: Bruce Lincoln
“A confidential informant is not a spy…”
The title of this post is a quotation from US Senator Lindsey Graham, during a recent radio interview — find more details here, in a recent Washington Post report, along with a transcript of that portion of his interview. It concerns the President characterizing someone who is now much in the news as being a “spy” planted in his campaign by the FBI. That others understand this person as an informant — someone who, of their own volition, apparently decided […]
“Are You From Horry County, M’am…?”
Looking for a dissertation topic? Then here’s a 7 minute video you could write a book on, easily. Maybe two. […]
Theses on a Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion: Part 1
I made a promise during the inaugural seminar on the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion that met last week at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion: to apply Bruce Lincoln’s theses on method to the philosophy of religion. The seminar itself has the objective of producing a new philosophy of religion textbook that”thoroughly integrates non theistic religious philosophies and critically engages the methodological and theoretical issues of religious studies.” Why? As I have written elsewhere, a review of the TOCs of […]
Read More from Theses on a Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion: Part 1
“Who said names were supposed to be easy to say? What are you, a candy bar?”
Students in REL 237 are watching Avalon this week, a 1990 film about the changes that take place within a family of early to mid-20th century Americans who, like so many of our ancestors, came to this continent from somewhere else. “I came to America in 1914…, by way of Philadelphia. That’s where I got off the boat,” says Sam, one of the film’s protagonists, recollecting an epic past for the grandchildren. One of the reasons that I like using […]
Read More from “Who said names were supposed to be easy to say? What are you, a candy bar?”
A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 6: Irrevocable Commitments
This is an installment in an ongoing series on the American Academy of Religion’s recently released draft statement on research responsibilities. An index of the complete series (updated as each article is posted) can be found here. This is, at least to me, perhaps the most troubling of all the bullet points in the document, because of the way it fails to take a stand despite providing the impression of taking a very strong one. As with other portions of […]
Read More from A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 6: Irrevocable Commitments
A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 4: Research on Human Subjects
This is an installment in an ongoing series on the American Academy of Religion’s recently released draft statement on research responsibilities. An index of the complete series (updated as each article is posted) can be found here. The previous post ended by citing the fourth of Bruce Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” — specifically, his call for scholars always to contextual, historicize, what they study by asking “who speaks here?” and “to what audience?” Among my difficulties with the AAR’s draft […]
Read More from A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 4: Research on Human Subjects
A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 3: Do No Harm
This is an installment in an ongoing series on the American Academy of Religion’s recently released draft statement on research responsibilities. An index of the complete series (updated as each article is posted) can be found here. The previous post — concerned with a group of Academy members who, I argued, are necessarily absent from the draft statement on responsibilities (why necessarily? If they were explicitly acknowledged it would likely undermine our ability, as an Academy, to advocate for academic […]
Read More from A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 3: Do No Harm
Our Highest Ideals
I recall a close friend, almost 30 years ago, to whom I asked the following often-heard question, when they’d just had their first child: Is he a good baby? His reply? We don’t believe in making moral judgments about our child. I admit that the answer came as a bit of a surprise, since I was simply interested in knowing if the baby was sleeping the whole night through and eating ok; but, sure, after I thought about it for […]
Self, Society, & Religion
Prof. McCutcheon’s Fall 2015 REL 237 will introduce and explore the application of social theory in the study of religion by reading and then applying the work of Prof. Bruce Lincoln, at the University of Chicago (and REL’s onetime Aronov Lecturer), to a specific episode of what we will come to term “affinity and estrangement” as represented in Dennis Covington’s well-known book, Salvation on Sand Mountain. The class is limited to 30 students. […]