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.
As an MA student in the “public humanities” core course at REL, Lauren Thompson observed a 2023 American Examples workshop. After making a video, she realized something about religion scholars: they’re inhuman. Read more to find out how and why! […]
Read More from American Examples S04 E01: “Religion Scholars are not human”
Aidan Nuttall is asking applied questions about data production in his second year of MA studies at REL. […]
Read More from How Did We Get This Information? Questions from a Religious Studies Perspective
Prof. Loewen wonders what religion scholars might learn about “being critical” from philosophers of religion. […]
People often enter the academic study of religion because of questions and curiosities
that we have about the world around us. Cultivating these curiositiescan lead to new questions about how groups and texts work. […]
Read More from How does curiosity lead to opportunity? A student’s development of new skills
REL MA student Trevor Linn observed the 2023 American Examples public humanities workshop. Here’s what he found! […]
Read More from “Making the thing is the thing”: Observing the 2023 American Examples Cohort
Understanding the various systems that organize the world is one outcome of a major inReligious Studies. Though it was not his first expectation, that is exactly what Justin Nelson (RELmajor who graduated in 2007) credits for contributing to various successes he has experienced.Last month, Justin returned to campus for Grad Tales, a department event that features alumnisharing with students their journey from graduation to wherever they are now. It is anencouraging event to attend during undergrad as most, if not […]
Casey A’Hearn is an REL MA student who uses Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology to understand Joseph Smith Jr.’s First Vision.
[…]
Read More from Seeing Joseph Smith Jr.’s First Vision as an Ideology
by Marguerite Mayhall*, Kean University. The carved relief lintel showing Lady Xok performing a bloodletting ritual for her husband Shield Jaguar’s accession to the throne of the Maya site of Yaxchilan is a startling image (top left image, Lintel 24). Xok, dressed in an elaborate huipil, or woven dress, kneels while she draws a barbed rope through her tongue and piles it in a bowl in front of her. Her husband, the king-to-be, stands over her, holding a torch and […]
We are glad to have students returning to classes this week after a busy summer for everyone. We have a new department chair and an exciting group of incoming MA students. Check out our Welcome Back video to see some of the changes that we have made to get ready for Fall 2023. We have had a productive summer beyond those changes. As a faculty, we have finished 6 books, more than 20 book chapters, 4 journal articles, and international […]
Kim Davis is a 2003 graduate of REL. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2020 and became an avid explorer, hiker, and trail runner much to the surprise of everyone who knows her. She invites everyone to come experience the Land of Enchantment. When I moved from Alabama to New Mexico, I became an aficionado of New Mexican chile. New Mexican chile is not the meat and beans stew that is prepared in the Southeast, but rather it […]