By Micah Davis Micah Davis is a nineteen year-old sophomore majoring in philosophy at the University of Alabama. He is also a Religious Studies minor. Attack on Titan is a current production anime that began airing in 2013 in Japan based on a manga created in 2009. There is a new live action movie adaptation which is set to release in 2015. If you YouTube “Attack on Titan live action movie,” you will find a couple of different versions of the advertisement […]
Month: February 2014
Backstory: Prof. Steven Ramey
“Backstory” is a series that asks the REL Faculty to tell us a little bit about themselves, to explore how they became interested in the academic study of religion and their own specialty, elaborating on their current work both within and outside the University. Where are you from? I grew up in Williamsburg, Kentucky, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains with less than 5000 people. The town has a small private college where my father taught, so I grew […]
A New REL Class Blog
Are you following what’s going on at Prof. Altman‘s class’s blog? You should. […]
Backstory
Backstory is an ongoing series in which we ask a few questions of the REL faculty to learn a little more about their work, their background, and how they first discovered the academic study of religion. Mike Altman Matt Bagger Eleanor Finnegan Suma Ikeuchi Steve Jacobs Nathan Loewen Russell McCutcheon Steven Ramey Merinda Simmons Vaia Touna Ted Trost […]
The Quarterback
By Brooke Champagne Brooke Champagne is an instructor of English and the Assistant Director of First-Year Writing at The University of Alabama. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction from Louisiana State University. While she makes her living as a teacher, she is a perennial student of writing, religion, and language, including REL 419 in Spring 2014. On July 13, 2013, 31-year-old Glee star Cory Monteith died of a heroin and alcohol overdose. He was found […]
Power/Knowledge in Real Time
Have you been following the controversy over Wendy Doniger’s recent book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, published by Penguin? It is now being reported that the publisher has agreed to withdraw and pulp the book, in the near future, due to a 2011 court case in India, arguing it was insulting to Hinduism. […]
Backstory: Prof. Russell McCutcheon
“Backstory” is a series that asks the REL Faculty to tell us a little bit about themselves, to explore how they became interested in the academic study of religion and their own specialty, elaborating on their current work both within and outside the University. Where are you from? I was born in Port Colborne, Ontario, in Canada, not far from Buffalo, NY, actually, in a region that is called southern Ontario. It’s both an industrial and a farming region—lots of […]
What’s Good for the Goose…?
Have you seen this article, from Canada’s National Post…? It opens as follows: A London, Ont., university is defending its decision to restrict access to a course that teaches Muslims how to proselytize. The Huron College course — The Muslim Voice: Islamic Preaching, Public Speaking and Worship — was, according to the syllabus, “open to Muslim men and women who offer religious leadership and/or speak publicly about Islam on behalf of their communities.” While I have no doubt that there’s […]
Dispatch from a UK Classroom
A friend in the UK on Facebook just posted this newspaper article for what seems to be a new series, “Academic Anonymous” — “where academics can tell it like it is”– entitled: Teaching Religion: My Students are Trying to Run My Course Not a few academics in the UK now feel rather frustrated, what with a variety of changes in higher education funding brought about recently by the government there — issues not unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic, […]
Backstory: Prof. Michael J. Altman
“Backstory” is a series that asks the REL Faculty to tell us a little bit about themselves, to explore how they became interested in the academic study of religion and their own specialty, elaborating on their current work both within and outside the University. Where are you from? I moved around a few times when I was a kid but always in the South. I was born in Virginia and lived in Florida and Georgia briefly growing up. But most […]