By Joshua Blackwell Joshua Blackwell is a junior Biology major from Alabaster, Alabama. Despite his scientific focus, Joshua is also passionate about music, philosophy, and theology. Upon graduating, Joshua hopes to attend medical school. Over the past many years, we as Americans have become consumed by our culture. Rarely acknowledging the existence of an outside world, we idolize our own celebrities, magazines, fashion, and literature. Designers and authors may find inspiration in the work of others, of course; for the […]
Month: April 2014
Praxising What We Preach: Kickball and the Communitas of an Academic Department
Why do we teach our students social theory? Why teach them about collective effervescence, habitus, and discourse? I think we do it because we find these theories to be useful tools for analyzing and explaining the world around us. But often, I think, we academics are wont to apply these same theories to our more intimate surroundings. Theory is often a tool for explaining that stuff out there and rarely do we see it as a tool that we can […]
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How Art Thou?
By Chris Beacham Chris Beacham is a junior undergraduate majoring in Psychology and minoring in Religious Studies. He is from New Orleans, and enjoys filmmaking and reading eastern philosophy. Next to the word love, the word art is probably the most vague and general term in the English language. Merriam Webster dictionary defines art as “something that is created with imagination and skill that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.” It seems to me that in a sense everything could […]
Membership Has Its Privileges
My first book, Manufacturing Religion, was a critique of what I called the discourse on sui generis religion — that is, the approach to studying religion that presumes its object of study is somehow unique, self-caused, original, one of a kind, can’t be fully explained, etc. To rephrase it, it was a critique of those who think that, when it comes to studying religion, a special set of interpretive tools must be used, to get at the deep meaning of […]
Digitalized Bricks and Mortar?
Does technology improve or replace universities? There was a debate recently, at Columbia University, on this very topic; read about it here or watch it. […]
“I’ve Seen Things…”
This semester I taught our senior seminar, required of all majors and minors before they graduate from the department. It was on the topic of tradition. Well, not really. It was on the topic of the discourse on tradition. That’s a difference that matters, I think. […]
The 6th Annual Manly Cup!
Back in 2009, the Religious Studies Student Association rekindled the flames of an old rivalry in Manly Hall: The Manly Cup. What was, in 2009, a heated competition and turf war between the RSSA and Theta Alpha Kappa, the Religious Studies Honor Society, has evolved into a competition between the REL students and faculty. […]
Religion on the Television (Part 4)
The theme of children discovering religion apart from their non-religious parents is also developed on another popular show. Set in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration, The Americans is the story of two Russian spies who have set up a home and a family in the vicinity of Washington, DC. Philip (Noah Emmerich) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) execute frequent missions on behalf of the KGB under their cover as owners of a travel agency. Their children know nothing of […]
Meanwhile, Back at the Quad…
The 2013-14 newsletter is here. And, yes, we’ve shaken things up a little… […]
The Nature of Truth, Categorization, and Other Blurry Matters
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. If categorization is an ideological act, then the literary nonfiction genre is undergoing a major existential crisis. While there […]
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