“You need to be here.” from UA Religious Studies. Have you seen our latest video of grads reflecting on their undergraduate degree? See what they have to say. Dad came along, too… […]
Category: Religion in Culture
Posts in this category discuss how those aspects of culture known as religion can be studied in a way comparable to all other cultural practices.
“Grad Tales” Kicks Off
Last night we kicked off a new speakers series: “There and Back Again: Grad Tales.” We’re inviting back some former REL majors, who have graduated and gone on to some interesting careers. Coz if you think that the study of religion is all about being religious, then you’ve likely never thought it might be a great preparation for being a high school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, or maybe even starting your own business. Sure, some of them went on […]
Hannah Goes to India, Part 2
By Hannah Etchison Hannah Etchison, a graduating senior majoring in Religious Studies with a minor in Asian Studies, is spending six weeks of this fall in India, staying primarily at a monastery where she will learn from the women and help them with their English. This is her second post about that experience. See her first post. It has been suggested to me that others may be interested in how my opportunity came about. I am here to explain, in […]
Border Patrol
Seen this article? Students in our Department read anthropologists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, literary critics, philosophers, along with scholars of religion, to name just a few of the other fields that we regularly draw on in carrying out our work. So what do you think the implications of this cross-disciplinary work are for our field — is it interdisciplinary at its core? Are we valued by those in other fields? Or maybe the better question is: What fields are not interdisciplinary […]
“Are You Irish?”
By Kim Davis Kim Davis (pictured on the right) earned her B.A. in French and Religious Studies from the University of Alabama in 2003. She went on to get her Masters in French Linguistics and Literature in 2007 and a Masters in Secondary Language Pedagogy in 2010, both from UA. Kim now teaches French and Mythology at Tuscaloosa County High School. It’s a question I have heard a lot in the ten years I have been a performer and teacher of […]
Can Anything be a Ritual?
By Mary Rebecca Read-Wahidi Becky is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and will graduate just as soon as she finishes writing her dissertation on the Virgin of Guadalupe. She joined the Department of Religious Studies as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Fall of 2012, and was immediately enamored by the charming atmosphere, lofty office space, and pencils with “religion in culture” printed on them. Recently in Dr. Ramey’s “Introduction to Religions of the World” class he was […]
Hannah Goes to India, Part 1
By Hannah Etchison Hannah Etchison, a graduating senior majoring in Religious Studies with a minor in Asian Studies, is spending six weeks of this fall in India, staying primarily at a monastery where she will learn from the women and help them with their English. This is her first post about that experience. I became enraptured with the study of Buddhism through a variety of experiences during my time in the Religious Studies department of the University of Alabama, but […]
Rearview Mirror, Episode One
Have you seen our new series, of interviews with grads…? Rearview Mirror with Jennifer Nelson from UA Religious Studies. […]
Hocus Pocus
Have you seen this clip making the rounds on the internet? Despite it being an ad for a movie (sigh — everything’s an ad for something, no?) and assuming that the unassuming people depicted in it really were unassuming, then their reactions raise a curious question for those who rather confidently distinguish between domains we call religion and science based on the latter being rational and modern and the former not. […]
Isn’t That Special
Did you see the post from last year at The Chronicle‘s site, on widespread dissatisfaction of mid-career profs? I’d not, so thanks to a Facebook friend for re-posting it the other day. The researcher who conducted the survey of over 13,510 faculty comments: […]