The Faculty Retweet

The semester is almost upon us and, for us faculty, that can mean only one thing: the annual Faculty Retreat. On Monday, all of the department’s faculty will hunker down in the University Club, drink coffee, eat the buffet, and think hard about the future. It’s a time of planning, dreaming, and strategery. It’s a time when we sit down as a department and figure out what we want to accomplish this year. Want to know what we’re up to? […]

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Study the Humanities and Save America

Jack Bauer has a BA in English Lit, so don't say the liberal arts can't get you anywhere pic.twitter.com/QhHTNePKN1 — Chris Becker (@crsbecker) May 6, 2014 I came across the above tweet last week and it made me smile. Jack Bauer, the main character in the FOX television show 24, earned his bachelor’s degree in English literature from UCLA. On one level, it became an interesting answer to, “what can you do with a humanities degree?” You can save the […]

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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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What Does “Omaha!” Mean?

Photo: Craig Hawkins via Flickr Peyton Manning loves Omaha. Or at least the Denver Broncos quarterback loves to yell “OMAHA!” just before the start of a play. Omaha is just one of the many words he and other quarterbacks yell just before the ball is snapped. Sometimes these words are audibles, quick changes of the play the team is about to run. Sometimes they are meaningless verbiage meant to confuse the other team. […]

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Racial or Religious Humor as Means of Negotiation

By Zach Price Zach Price is a Religious Studies major; a Black Belt in Isshin Ryu; a student of Shen Lung Kung Fu; and a guitar, banjo, and tin whistle enthusiast. This post originally appeared on the blog Monks and Nones, the class blog for REL 371. So if you missed the “joke” that Rick Warren posted on Facebook and the proceeding backlash then you can catch up on all of it here. Basically Rick Warren, a famous mega-church pastor, […]

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