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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.

Welcome to Spring 2023!

by admin

Classes begin this week, and REL’s faculty are looking forward to seeing who’s there. The on-campus undergraduate courses in REL this semester include introductions to religious studies by Profs. Altman and Szanto. Other 100-level, introductory courses are being offered by Profs. Ramey, Loewen, and Kyselov. The 200-level courses have a variety of topical foci, with Prof. Jacobs teaching on Judaism, Prof. Newton on African Diaspora Religions, and Prof. Szanto on Islam. Prof. Jacobs also teaches a 300-level course on Jewish-Christian […]

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When Do I Get to Be a Scholar?

by Ellie Dilworth

Ellie Dilworth is a sophomore double majoring in Business Management and Religious Studies. Just the other day, I was visiting the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. As I was walking around, I was brainstorming my upcoming blog post on the institution and thinking of my opening remarks. I was chiefly trying to decide whether to identify myself as a “religious studies scholar” or “scholar of the Bible.” In the midst of this conundrum, I had a very religious […]

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The Possibilities of Graduate Education

by Steven Ramey

Why pursue an MA in the humanities when the chances of securing a tenure track position with a PhD are so low? That is a common question that students and faculty grapple with in the current university context. Helping students prepare for both their future and the myriad ways that they can contribute to society needs to be emphasized, which is something that we take seriously in the MA in Religion in Culture program at Alabama. Last Monday in Denver, […]

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None is Too Many*

by etech_admin
Cover art for Ken Burns' documentary "The U.S. and the Holocaust"

Bar none, Ken Burns (b. 1953) is decidedly America’s most important documentary filmmaker, notable as well for his multi-episode contributions exploring facets of this nation’s history and story His latest contribution—The U.S. and the Holocaust [2022; 3]—is no exception, and, as he himself has acknowledged in more than one interview, builds upon his 2014 The Roosevelts where the Holocaust/Shoah played only a relatively minor role, but one which he readily has also acknowledged may yet prove to be the “most […]

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A Feature of the System of Governance

by admin

A folk healer like Agnis trod a fine line between being someone people called upon when they needed help and someone they blamed when misfortune struck (21:30) So says Lucy Worsley, the joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and also the host of a variety of recent TV shows on British history. The above quotation is twenty minutes into a recent episode on the late sixteenth century Scottish witch trials, specifically focusing on that of Agnis […]

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Examples: Why Would a Religious Studies Scholar Study That?

by Michael Altman

We are really cranking out the podcast series on our Study Religion podcast here in REL. One of our latest podcast series is an American Examples and RELdl production hosted by Religion in Culture MA student and American Examples fellow, Ciara Eichhorst. It’s called “Examples” and it’s a podcast that explores what we have come to call the “examples approach” to studying religion in culture. The examples approach sees specific case studies of religion in America as opportunities for investigating […]

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