Tag: Mike Altman


American Examples S04 E01: “Religion Scholars are not human”

Opening scene from Lauren Thompson's american examples video.

As an MA student in the “public humanities” core course at REL, Lauren Thompson observed a 2023 American Examples workshop. After making a video, she realized something about religion scholars: they’re inhuman. Read more to find out how and why! […]

Read More from American Examples S04 E01: “Religion Scholars are not human”

Kayfabe, or, Why a Scholar of Religion Might Be Interested in Pro Wrestling

As a scholar of religion, I’m interested in the term “belief.” I find it to be a very curious term. For example, why would 75,000 people fill a football stadium for two nights of Wrestlemania earlier this year to watch professional wrestling matches that they didn’t believe were “real”? Because pro wrestling is “fake,” right? No one believes it’s a real sport or a real competition, right? But yet enough people in the spend their time and money on these […]

Read More from Kayfabe, or, Why a Scholar of Religion Might Be Interested in Pro Wrestling

“Working Yourself into a Shoot”: When is a Performance a Performance?

As some of you may know, I love pro wrestling and I think it can be good data for the scholar of religion. Let me offer a recent example that lit up the wrestling fan twitters over the weekend. The WWE, the world’s biggest wrestling company, toured through Canada over the weekend, holding a show in Edmonton, Alberta. While driving through Canada, one of the wrestlers, Lacey Evans, was pulled over for speeding. She posted this video on Twitter Saturday. 1.Canada […]

Read More from “Working Yourself into a Shoot”: When is a Performance a Performance?

REL Receives Four Year, $350,000 Grant from the Luce Foundation

The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is very pleased to announce a $350,000 grant from the Henry  Luce Foundation to fund a significantly expanded version of its American Examples Workshop (piloted in 2018-19 with the assistance of UA’s College of Arts & Sciences). With this new grant, the Department will call for applications and select up to nine early career scholars (ranging from ABD to tenure-track) to be brought to the University of Alabama three times throughout […]

Read More from REL Receives Four Year, $350,000 Grant from the Luce Foundation

Argument Analysis: Legion v. American Humanist Association

Jackson Foster is a freshman at UA, majoring in Religious Studies and History and minoring in the Blount Undergraduate Initiative and Randall Research Scholars Program. He is currently studying the intersections between law, politics, and religion in Dr. Altman’s REL130 course. This piece was originally published in High School SCOTUS, a national Supreme Court blog comprised of young students like Jackson. The Supreme Court heard arguments last month in American Legion v. American Humanist Association, a case involving a 40-foot […]

Read More from Argument Analysis: Legion v. American Humanist Association

Alex Ates Wins SETC Young Scholars Award

Last semester Prof. Merinda Simmons mentored graduate student Alex Ates in an independent study — a program designed to help students earn credit while researching specific material that typically manifests into a conclusive project. Alex, an MFA student in the Department of Theatre and Dance, compiled data on the Free Southern Theater before writing a compelling essay on the groups’ confrontation of “American moral contradictoriness”. The community theater group was founded in Mississippi in 1963 with the goal of combining art and politics on stage to […]

Read More from Alex Ates Wins SETC Young Scholars Award

Summer Plans: Prof. Altman

We asked the faculty what they were up to this summer; after all, just because the Spring semester is done doesn’t mean they’re all off gardening. And so this is what we learned… Prof. Altman will be spending the summer doing a lot of reading in primary and secondary sources for two projects. Indeed he has stacks of books piled high in his office. First, he is working on a journal article tentatively titled “Evangelical, Evangelicals, Evangelicalism” that re-describes what […]

Read More from Summer Plans: Prof. Altman