This past weekend, several faculty members and one former student presented research and networked with colleagues at the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Andie Alexander, a recent grad and office worker extraordinaire, presented a paper entitled “Shifting the Focus: Understanding the Teller Behind the Tale” for a Method and Theory in the Study of Religion undergraduate research panel. Dr. Finnegan presented a paper entitled “The Digital Discourses of Muslim Environmentalist,” which tracked […]
Month: March 2014
The Proclaimers
I’ve seen a lot of early career people teaching — of course, I was once one of them, like us all, back when, at the University of Tennessee in the early 1990s, I would write out entire lectures the day or night before and then read them each class, sticking closely to my text — and they unfortunately share a trait with some of their older, supposedly experienced colleagues: they’re proclaimers. Sitting at the back of a classroom, during the […]
Papa Don’t Preach
In an article today, entitled “No Right to Preach,” Inside Higher Ed reports: While the First Amendment provides faculty members at public colleges and universities with considerable latitude about what they may say, a federal judge has ruled it does not restrict a state university from cautioning professors against making statements that favor one religion or another, and that may seem to insult the religious views of some students. […]
Retellings of Baridegi
By: Max Hartley Max Hartley is a senior studying Anthropology and Asian Studies, with a focus on East Asia. She is particularly fascinated by mythology, religion, and the influence of folk religions in the modern age, as well as shamanism in its many forms, particularly as it is practiced in Korea The Korean myth of Bari-degi or The Abandoned Princess Bari tells the story of the first mudang, or shaman. The myth details how the young princess, abandoned at birth […]
Extra, Exatra: Idol Worshipers Make the News
THIMPHU, Bhutan (RNS) For centuries, Buddhists in this tiny landlocked Himalayan kingdom have had a special devotion to the most unusual of objects: the phallus. Painted on the walls of their homes, hanging from the eaves of their houses and seen in vehicles and on rooftops, images of the phallus are an essential part of Bhutan’s traditional ceremonies…. So opens a recent Huffington Post article, ripped straight from the 19th century’s headlines. For if you want to see how very […]
Lectures and Films and Blogs, Oh My…
REL 360 is the course number that we’re now using for a new, 1 credit hour course (repeatable for up to a total of 3 semesters/credit hours), beginning in the Fall of 2014, on what happens when the Humanities bumps into popular culture. Offered each semester, it is the outgrowth of the past two years of informal movie nights with our student association — although they were successful events they lacked the opportunity of delving into the issues of the […]
From Mysticism to Spirituality, From Tradition to Individual
Prof. Richard King, from the University of Kent in the UK, was on campus to deliver our 12th annual Aronov Lecture. Perhaps best known to some for his interest in the history of the study of religion in south Asia during the colonial period (e.g., his 1999 book, below), […]
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I Cannot Tell a Lie
By John D. James John D. James is a junior Religious Studies major and General Business minor from Huntsville, Alabama. In an online article titled “The George Washington You Never Knew”, the author constructs a different, more personal Washington. The author’s own construction of who his “Washington” is includes a poor speaker, a dictator, even a master of espionage. The author is trying to emphasize a view of his “Washington” that few ever see. Challenging the idea of who George […]
It’s Alive
Throughout times, also Christianity has manifested itself and has been manifested and lived out materially through objects, symbols, the body, and the environment… So opens the call for papers for an upcoming conference in Finland — making pretty evident, I think, how current, seemingly cutting edge, scholarship on so-called embodied religion or material religion is just a repackaged version of (as I described it earlier this morning on a Facebook post, and as I’ve discussed here before and before that) […]
Competing Representations
T. Nicole Goulet is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Manitoba and Brandon University. Having completed her Ph.D. at the University of Manitoba on textual representations of Sarada Devi, Dr. Goulet continues her research on the intersection of colonial politics and religious practice in India, with special reference to gender. After an online conversation about the recent Doniger/Penguin affair it was evident that she had something new to say about this episode and so we invited this post. In […]