Highlighting REL Undergraduate Research

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Student presenting a paper at the 2019 undergrad research symppsoium, with students listening

It’s that time again: time to consider presenting your research at REL’s 7th annual Honors Research Symposium. Devoted to the work of our undergrad students, the annual symposium is chaired by REL M.A. students and is again organized by REL faculty member, Emily Crews.

The event this year will again be held in Gorgas Library 205, all morning on Thursday, March 26 — we’ll announce the actual start time closer to the event, once we know how many students will be presenting.

All students enrolled in a REL class — whether or not
you’re a major or minor — are eligible to participate.

So if you have an essay that you wrote for one of your REL classes that you think could be revised and presented orally in approx. 10 minutes, then contact an REL professor to see if they’ll mentor you in the revision process. Or perhaps if they’ll even supervise a new paper that you intend to write for the event. Once you have your mentor in place, they’ll alert Prof. Crews that you’re aiming to participate in the event.

Note: students working on Honors projects in REL are expected to present their research at this annual event.

Light refreshments will be provided.

A Call for Nominations

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The four inaugural alum recognotion award winners in 2019Last year we created a new award, given out at Honors Day 2019 for the first time: the Alum Recognition Award. It acknowledges the ongoing contributions to the Department that our graduates continue to make and/or the interesting challenges they tackle and notable accomplishment they make in their chosen professions and lives. All B.A. majors and minors who have graduated from the Department of Religious Studies, as well as those who have completed the REL M.A., are eligible to be considered.

Based on annual nominations the REL faculty determines each year’s recipient(s).

If awardees are able to attend, the awards are given out at Honors Day each year (this year: Friday, April 3, 2020); otherwise, awards will be mailed. (Pictured above: our four inaugural recipients, at Honors Day 2019, all members of our Alum Liaison Committee).

So, this is a call for nominations.

Each nomination letter must be no more than two single-spaced pages in length; letters must note when the nominee graduated from the University of Alabama, their degree, as well as their major(s) and minor(s). The letter will draw our attention to the alum’s professional and/or personal accomplishments since leaving UA, where possible paying special attention to the ways in which their training and time in our Department has been used by them since leaving Manly Hall. Finally, those writing letters should alert the nominee of their nomination.

No self-nominations, please.

Signed letters of nomination should be sent to Dr. Vaia Touna, either in hard copy, c/o The Department of Religious Studies, 212 Manly Hall, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487-0264, or as file attached emails.

Deadline: All nominations must be received by the end of the business day on Friday, February 28, 2020.

Recipients will be notified in early March 2020. And, whether nominated or not, we always welcome alums to join us again for our annual Honors Day reception on the balcony.

We look forward to receiving your nominations.

The Domino’s Effect–From Trash to Cash

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Domino's Pizza restaurant with a delivery bike in front of the store.

“Domino’s Pizza in the Nieuw-Vennep, The Netherlands,” photo by Amin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

It’s 1:00am, and I can’t sleep. I went to sleep early to be ready for the first day of the new semester. And for the past hour, I’ve been thinking about one thing and one thing only…

Domino’s Pizza!

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REL Adds New Faculty Member

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Jeri Wieringa head shotThe Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Jeri E. Wieringa — a digital historian and affiliate faculty member with the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University — will be joining the faculty as a tenure-track Assistant Professor for the start of the Fall 2020 semester. She received her Ph.D. in History from George Mason University (2019); her M.A. in Religion, with a concentration in the History of Christianity, from Yale Divinity School (2011); and her B.A from Calvin College, with double majors in Philosophy and English (2008). Continue reading →

The Study Religion Podcast is now on Spotify

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Did you know that we have a podcast called Study Religion? Well, we do. You can find it on Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. But now, you can also find it on Spotify. We just added our podcast to their wonderful collection. So go find us wherever you listen to podcasts and catch up on some of our best episodes. Here are some ones to start with:

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“Happy Arbitrary New Year”

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January 2020 calendar

A friend on social media wished everyone a “happy arbitrary new year” last night. And it got me thinking.

We all know — right? — that there’s a variety of dating systems that have existed historically, let alone today (case in point: see the January 25th Chinese new year on that image up above…?). So, at some level, most of us surely understand that it isn’t really the start of a new year today. Instead, should we grant the Gregorian calendar‘s legitimacy for how we organize time, then, yes, today is the start of a new year. Continue reading →

True or False or a Mix of Both? The Dissonance of the Gospels presented in Galatia

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Rebekah Pearson ’22 is a Religious Studies-Dance Performance double major. In Prof. Newton’s Introduction to the New Testament course, she examined Paul’s Letter to the Galatians as an artifact of competing social definitions. This essay was part of her group’s Bible in Culture zine. Learn more in the first, second, third, and fourth posts of the series. 

Imagine this: You have been running for over an hour and you finally make it to what you think is the finish line of your first 10K. But wait! There is no finish line and no crowd cheering you on. All of a sudden you realize that at some point along the way you have made a wrong turn. Now not only are you lost, but you also have to turn around and backtrack to the starting line, only to re-run the entire race. In the biblical Epistle to the Church at Galatia, commonly known as “Galatians,” the recipients of Paul’s letter must have felt similarly. As the people of Galatia are being told many versions of what being a part of the new Christian collective means, Paul, in his epistle to the church at Galatia, rebukes the false teachings that are being spread and reminds his churches of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He establishes not only his authority, but also the authority of the message of faith he preaches so that the Galatians can be certain that they are not living their lives in vain.

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Need Something to Listen to During Your Holiday Travel?

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The Study Religion podcast makes great holiday travel listening. We just released the third episode in our series titled “Making the Jump” that features interviews with people who made a big change in their academic career by taking a risk and trying something new. You can find all three episodes below or on iTunes or SoundCloud.

 

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