You a fan of country music? If so, then you may already know about Ken Burns’ new 16 hour documentary, on PBS. (Maybe you’ve seen some of his others…?) But if you’re not a fan you probably should still be watching it, since (at least in the first episode) it provides some wonderful examples of how a scholar who goes digging in the archives, after the little details, can unearth some really interesting things. Continue reading
We recently sat down with Caity Bell, a second year M.A. student in Religious Studies, and talked about internship opportunities. This past summer she helped frame historic representations during her internship with the Landmarks Association of DeKalb County (pictured above).
1. How did you first hear about the chance to do an internship as part of your MA in Religious Studies?
Caity: I first heard about the opportunity during one of our colloquium sessions. Dr. Merinda Simmons, our Grad Director, had invited Dr. Susan Reynolds, Editor for Alabama Heritage, to discuss the various ways she’s used her degree in the Humanities to her benefit in jobs outside of traditional academic positions. Susan mentioned at the end of our meeting that she was looking for interns to help out at the magazine the following semester and I was quick to apply for the position. Though I didn’t choose to receive academic credit for the internship I did still work it into the independent study I was doing with my advisor, Dr. Steven Ramey. Continue reading
We have some news: Associate Professor Daniel Levine, a faculty member in UA’s Department of Political Science, has just been appointed by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees as the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies. He will now have a co-appointment to both Political Science and the Department of Religious Studies, teaching equally for both units — with his first REL course (a Core course on religion and politics) coming in the Spring 2020 semester.
Dr. Levine studies International Relations, political philosophy and theory, as well as Middle Eastern politics. His research draws on Frankfurt School social theory and on the history and philosophy of social science to examine the interactions between academic scholarship and public policy. Currently, his focus is on fear: both the direct experience of it, and its “afterlife” in history and public memory, as well as in the workings of political institutions and in discussions and implementations of policy. Continue reading
American Examples is a collaborative working group for early career scholars who study religion in America, broadly conceived, from a variety of disciplines. The program is generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. American Examples engages the study of religion in America across the three areas of research, teaching, and public scholarship. Drawing on expertise from across the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, American Examples’ training and mentoring produces scholars whose work exceeds the intellectual and geographic boundaries of “American religion” or “American religious history.”
American Examples seeks applications for participants in its newly expanded 2020 program. AE consists of three two-day workshops, each with its own focus: research, public scholarship, and teaching. The workshops are hosted at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and led by mentors drawn from the faculty of the Department of Religious. Travel, lodging, and meals in Tuscaloosa for participants are paid for by American Examples.
The Workshops
Research- March 5-8, 2020: A collaborative discussion of chapter length works in progress that will lead to the publication of an edited anthology of participants’ chapters.
Public Scholarship- May 7-10 2020: An introduction to a number of digital tools for building public digital projects and presenting research to larger publics through digital platforms.
Teaching- Oct 1-4, 2020: A collaborative and engaging series of discussions and activities that will equip participants with new methods and pedagogy for teaching courses on religion in America.
For more information on the workshops see http://americanexamples.ua.edu/about.
Years ago, before I had kids, I was chitchatting with an acquaintance. I cannot recall what we were actually talking about. The memory is remarkable to me because these days I am rarely alone enough to enjoy a leisurely adult conversation. I can’t believe now how much I took such moments for granted back then.
Anyway, in the midst of the conversation, the acquaintance’s young daughter came out of a building to meet her mother. They can’t have been apart for more than a few hours, but their reunion would make you think it had been days or weeks. The scene was heartwarming even from the position of the third-wheel.
As I watched them embrace, I felt a second-hand joy. And maybe out of some weird sense of guilt or obligation, I felt the need to say something the way people do when they find a silence awkward. I had never seen the young girl before, and I said something about how I thought she resembled her mother.
I don’t think the little girl heard or cared to listen to what I said. However, the mother took the comment in, looked at me, and said that they the daughter was adopted.
In hindsight, maybe I should have endured the silence! 😉
I don’t even know if this acquaintance would remember the incident. But my confusion about the moment left an impression enough for me to write about it years later.
You see, I did not intend for my remark to be a commentary on the genetic legitimacy of parentage. All I meant was that, in my observation, the child and the adult had similar appearances. But if you think about a game like Guess Who–the object of which is to deduce the identity of a select person by asking the selector questions about the person’s appearance, then you can see just how derivative such observations can be. If anything, I meant to point out something about the emotional closeness of the parent and daughter. I happened to riff on a physical relationship to do so. My acquaintance did not grant the authority of my metaphor.
Lest you think I’m trying to defend my actions, you should know that as a Black father of bi-racial children whose facial features are often the subject of exoticizing conversations, one of my nightmares is that at the wrong place and the wrong time, someone seeing a difference in our physical features will lead to a well-meaning but prejudicial concern about our emotional distance and result in our separation. So if anything, I was happy to be schooled in the aforementioned moment.
Maybe I should have paid better attention to Durkheim and thought about the social function of my comment. The incident has got me thinking more about the limits of a “family resemblance” approach to religion. Because while there’s no problem with simply remarking that something is a religion or like a religion, it leaves unclear what that resemblance means explicitly. As Timothy Fitzgerald says, “There is a human drama being played out here and we may want to know the story” (231).
But to essentialize a relationship is to grow comfortable with more ambiguity, not less. Besides that not being a great game, what are the consequences of that complacency?
Your guess is as good as mine.
The other day I was looking at UVA’s podcast, now with several episodes (give it a listen), and couldn’t help but notice a nice example of a theoretical and methodological fracture point in the field, one which likely prompts people to pick a side when doing their work.
For although I agree that “the sacred is the profane,” Bill Arnal and I didn’t quite have this sense of the phrase in mind when picking a title for a set of essays that we collected together and published a few years ago. Continue reading
The first day of class can be a bit nerve-racking, even for profs. One might think that profs have it easy at the start of the semester, but we all know the importance of first impressions. And for myself, there can be a lot of anxiety around those initial activities.
There are a lot of different directions one could go on Day One. And last week I approached the start of my REL100 introductory course by working “backwards.”
I thought a bit about some of Ellie Cochran’s reflections about her time as an REL major. One thing that I kept coming back to in her blog posts was how the kinds of questions she came to ask toward the end of her time were not at all that different from the sort that many students have when they first enroll in a course. By degree’s end she had more tools for conceptualizing and investigating these questions–leading to more and more questions. Hints of that curiosity are there from the beginning.
So how might we take advantage of that kind of curiosity from the jump?
One way to absolutely not do this is to turn the course into a study of trivia and factoids.
More than a few Religious Studies profs have one of these in their office.
This is true. I found mine at the mall.
The wheel gives you data like the number of adherents, how the religion frames the afterlife, material culture, pros, cons, and a quick description of beliefs. Although all that information has its place and may be potentially interesting to students, I think they are savvy enough to know that a 15-week course on those things as an end (rather than a means) may be a lemon of an education.
So the question for me became how do I short-circuit any attempt to turn the class into a trip on the Wheel-o-Religion.
Now for whatever reason, when I think about my scholarship, I often come back took a classic Paul Mooney bit remarking on “the N-word.” Commenting on Americans’ simultaneous obsession with and aversion to talking about race, Mooney once remarked,
“Everybody wants to be a “N—–,” but nobody wants to be a N—–.”
Like many jokes, it surfaces the conditions on the way we make meaning. In the joke. In fewer than 15 words, Mooney relays an ethnographic observation to poke at the power dynamics, psychology, and history of race. I’m no comedian, but I’d be thrilled with those kind of results from a 75-minute class.
So instead of the Wheel-o-Religion, I riffed on Mooney’s bit:
“Everybody wants to talk about religion, but nobody wants to talk about religion.”
Then we broke it down, discussing the first question and then the second one.
I was pretty amazed by the depth of questions I got. The conversation was so riveting that I didn’t have time to snap a photo. I ended the class with one final discussion question:
What do we need to discuss this semester so that this course is not a waste of time?
Perhaps the most remarkable thing was how at no point did the questions turn to google-able answers. No trivia. No factoids.
So as the semester gets going. Let’s be a little a nervous. Let’s get a little curious. And let’s see where good questions take us. I hardly think that doing so would be a waste of our time.
Are you a Religious Studies prof? Tell us what you did for your first day.
It’s been another busy summer around Manly Hall, but we’re as excited as ever to begin the Fall semester.
So…, welcome back, students and faculty!
Welcome Back 2019 from UA Religious Studies on Vimeo.
The Fall semester commences tomorrow?!
Leading up to our annual welcome back video, we are reminiscing
on some of our favorite videos from previous years!
Are you anticipating this year’s new welcome back video?!
We’ll post it on the first day of classes — but until then: do you remember
the welcome back video from 2014?