Have a fun and safe new year’s eve and we’ll see you back on campus in 2017. […]
Month: December 2016
Why & How We Do What We Do
I saw on social media yesterday that Huston Smith is reported to have passed away. He was 97. Apart from an update on Wikipedia there’s not much news on this on social media yet. […]
Whose Loss is it Anyway?
Rebekka King is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research focuses on the negotiation of boundaries within North American Christianity. She teaches course on Method and Theory, Anthropology of Religion, and Contemporary Christianity. 2016 was the year of the loser. The more you lost, the better you were, especially if you shared it on Facebook. “I have all of David Bowie’s albums in vinyl. I’m going to post a picture of my collection.” “I […]
“I’m Laughing at Clouds…”
You likely know the scene: a man in love, drops his sweetheart off at her place, then proceeds to sing and dance, despite the inclement weather. […]
Jim and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
In the close to Fabricating Origins — a recent collection of short essays, by a wide array of scholars, on the problem of origins — I used the example of Jim and Pam, from the U.S. adaptation of the British series, “The Office,” to illustrate how malleable, and thus useful, the archive of the past can be in our efforts to make sense of where we happen to find ourselves today. For all I know I’ve blogged about it before […]
Read More from Jim and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Another Annus Horribilis
As the year comes to a close, and while we await the usual roll call of those famous people who died during the past year, I find it curious how 2016 seems to stand out for so many as being a particularly bad year — hence the #Dear2016 hastag. […]
The Rhetorics of Comparison
Yes, I had a root canal the other day. My first. Sure, I have had fillings and even a few crowns but never a root canal. […]
Make It So
Did you catch Titus Hjelm‘s excellent post the other day? His argument concerned the manner in which otherwise routine claims or actions are represented by specific groups, for specific reasons, as controversial; the apparent controversy of some religions (notably, in his post, Islam — at least to a number of people in so-called Western countries) is thus not an essential trait but one that is acquired in the public marketplace. […]
Thinking About Democracy After Citizenfour
Matthew McCullough is a Junior from Huntsville, AL majoring in Religious Studies and Political Science. The following was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. In a time when technology is more integral to our communication than ever, it is interesting how often people overlook the fact that as we become more immersed in technology, our private life inherently becomes more embedded in it as well. Sure, we may use a pin number to unlock a cell phone or a password […]
Research Responsibilities Revisited
Some may recall a series of posts from the summer of 2015, on what I saw as the shortcomings of a draft statement of the American Academy of Religion on their members’ research responsibilities. Their draft document was then the basis for a session at the AAR’s 2015 annual meeting, in Atlanta that year, and a final version of the document was then produced and passed, early in 2016, by the AAR Board. Until recently I wasn’t aware of where […]