Month: December 2014


The Rabbi and the Lawyer

Khortlan Patterson is a Junior at the University of Alabama majoring in Religious Studies and African American Studies. She is interested in education reform and minority academic achievement. This post was originally written for Dr. Rollens’ course, REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. A Serious Man is a film detailing a series of unfortunate life events of a Jewish man, Larry Gopnik. Many of us find ourselves in similar messes where we look for or actively commission others, who we consider qualified […]

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REL Announces a New Hire

The Department of Religious Studies is very pleased to announce that it has now finalized another new hire: Vaia Touna, who works on ancient and modern Greek identity, as examples of wider issues in identity studies, will begin as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, in August 2015. Vaia is currently completing her dissertation in the academic study of religion at the University of Alberta, entitled “The Politics of ‘Greek Identity’: Discourses on the Religious Self and Tradition”; she has also earned […]

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“Well, Somehow…”

Have you seen the new 1:25 video from Bill Nye, the science guy, explaining evolutionary theory with Emoji? It’s kind’a curious since it is clearly meant to persuade people inasmuch as it says complex things both fun and simply — hence the emojis popping in and swooshing and out — as if anti-evolutionary positions are inspired by their lack of understanding of complex matters. But here’s where, in the first 20 seconds, attempts like this fail… […]

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Zombieland is Your Land

Sarah Griswold is a junior double majoring in Mathematics and Religious Studies. She spends her “free time” analyzing her favorite shows on Netflix, which of course winds up ruining them. This post was originally written for Dr. Sarah Rollens’ course, REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. Stories about zombies are a fascination for many people in today’s popular culture. Beyond zombie movies and television shows, there are books, games, and even people who are preparing in real life for a threat that […]

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Just Look at That Parking Lot

Catie Stewart is a sophomore at the University of Alabama from Madison, Mississippi. She is double majoring in English and Religious Studies and minoring in Psychology. This post was originally written for Dr. Rollens’ course, REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. I recently watched the film A Serious Man for REL 360, and as the plot unfolded, I found myself wondering: What is going on? The storyline is riddled with seemingly disastrous events that all lead up to the movie’s finish, which […]

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“Brotherhood, Peace, and Let Loose with their Money”

With the Christian holiday season upon us, and the inevitable media coverage of the so-called “war on Christmas,” it’s worth remembering Lynch v. Donnelly (465 U.S. 668) — a US Supreme Court case from 1984 in which the city of Pawtucket, RI, was sued over the annual nativity scene that it erected, at (admittedly minimal) public expense each year in the downtown shopping area. […]

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