Last year we created a new award, given out at Honors Day 2019 for the first time: the Alum Recognition Award. It acknowledges the ongoing contributions to the Department that our graduates continue to make and/or the interesting challenges they tackle and notable accomplishment they make in their chosen professions and lives. All B.A. majors and minors who have graduated from the Department of Religious Studies, as well as those who have completed the REL M.A., are eligible to be […]
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.
All Good Things…
…, must come to an end. Here in REL we’ve been thinking about that old saying because we’ve now received formal notice from two members that their retirements are coming up soon. […]
The Domino’s Effect–From Trash to Cash
It’s 1:00am, and I can’t sleep. I went to sleep early to be ready for the first day of the new semester. And for the past hour, I’ve been thinking about one thing and one thing only… Domino’s Pizza! […]
REL Adds New Faculty Member
The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Jeri E. Wieringa — a digital historian and affiliate faculty member with the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University — will be joining the faculty as a tenure-track Assistant Professor for the start of the Fall 2020 semester. She received her Ph.D. in History from George Mason University (2019); her M.A. in Religion, with a concentration in the History […]
“Happy Arbitrary New Year”
A friend on social media wished everyone a “happy arbitrary new year” last night. And it got me thinking. We all know — right? — that there’s a variety of dating systems that have existed historically, let alone today (case in point: see the January 25th Chinese new year on that image up above…?). So, at some level, most of us surely understand that it isn’t really the start of a new year today. Instead, should we grant the Gregorian […]
True or False or a Mix of Both? The Dissonance of the Gospels presented in Galatia
Rebekah Pearson ’22 is a Religious Studies-Dance Performance double major. In Prof. Newton’s Introduction to the New Testament course, she examined Paul’s Letter to the Galatians as an artifact of competing social definitions. This essay was part of her group’s Bible in Culture zine. Learn more in the first, second, third, and fourth posts of the series. Imagine this: You have been running for over an hour and you finally make it to what you think is the finish line of your first […]
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Another Good Book
We asked Emily Crews about a good book that’s influenced her work. See what she told us… Learn about the books that other faculty have discussed… […]
Another Artifacts Episode
In this episode we talk with Emily Crews about something in her office that you might not have noticed… Interested in what else the faculty have in their offices…? […]
An REL Major from the Start
Now in his second year in REL at UA, we finally got a chance to ask Prof. Newton a few questions about his training and his research…. Who else haven’t you met yet…? […]
Have You Met Emily Crews?
Emily Crews is in the second year of teaching full-time in REL (while finishing her dissertation at the University of Chicago), devoting her time mostly to Honors intro courses but also teaching our monthly evening film class. If you’ve not had a class with her then this is your chance to get to know a little more about her work. Thanks to REL students Kyle Ashley and Savannah Aldridge for the movie magic. […]