A friend in the UK on Facebook just posted this newspaper article for what seems to be a new series, “Academic Anonymous” — “where academics can tell it like it is”– entitled: Teaching Religion: My Students are Trying to Run My Course Not a few academics in the UK now feel rather frustrated, what with a variety of changes in higher education funding brought about recently by the government there — issues not unfamiliar on this side of the Atlantic, […]
Every now and then you hear about a really large, anonymous tip that’s been left for a server — here’s a story (including video) from the other day on this very topic, from nearby Knoxville, TN. Of course, it’s hard for a scholar of religion not to hear things we commonly call religious scattered all throughout this story, like the Jesus has blessed us and we were led to give it to you. God Bless! note that accompanied the tip, […]
A new report has just been released by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAUP) — the press release opens as follows: […]
Like a lot of academics, I’m sure, I got this email the other day, from a textbook publisher doing its best — like all those MOOC providers and other eBook developers — to create the impression of a need. Funny, but I thought we’d already invented a way to have an individualized reading experience. […]
In the news this past week was the FBI’s classification of the fans — the so-called Juggalos — of the hip hop duo, Insane Clown Posse (ICP), as members of a gang (a classification that allows law enforcement greater freedoms). The group is now suing the FBI. […]
Did you catch the story, the other day, of the Canadian University in which religious identity and gender-inclusion ran straight into each other and the former seems to have prevailed? As reported in the newspaper, The Toronto Star, the story opens: A York University student who refused to do group work with women for religious reasons has sparked a human rights tug-of-war between a professor and campus administration. While the professor wanted to deny the student’s request, a university dean […]
I just saw this New York Times blog post, thanks to The Religious Studies Project’s post on its Facebook wall. The photographer, Jim Estrin, is quoted as follows: “The challenge for me is capturing the essence of an invisible event”… […]
Several Facebook friends have recently re-posted this Guardian article, “Why Non-Believers Need Rituals Too.” Its argument is that humanists or atheists or agnostics — or whatever else we name this loosely (if at all) identified group, a group likely comprised by our very talking about it — need to give more attention to the aesthetics of their collective practices. Why? … because it is through ritual that we remake and strengthen our social bonds. […]
Did you know that January 1st is also the beginning of the new year in Japanese Shinto, marked by celebrating the holiday known as Gantan-sai? Calendrical coincidence? Hardly. […]
File this story under “Classification Matters”: is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? I’ve used the Nix v. Hedden 1893 US Supreme Court decision in intro classes for quite some time, to illustrate the point that identity is the product of negotiations within practical conditions. Such as winning the right to count carrot marmalade as “fruit” for the purposes of trade within the European Union, perhaps? (Search for “carrot” in the following PDF document.) Even when it comes to […]