Yes, the first student association coffee break is this week: Tuesday from 1-3 pm in the REL lounge. Until then, this slow motion video of donut mass production will have to suffice. […]
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.
Prof. McCutcheon has Lots of Pots on the Stove
Prof. Russell McCutcheon, who came to UA as the REL Department Chair in the summer of 2001, sometimes says that the career of a scholar involves keeping a lot of pots boiling, all at a different rates. The trick is knowing which can just simmer, on the back burner, and which ones need attention because they’re about to boil over. Well, this year four pots that were each bubbling away on their own resulted in some new books, all of […]
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Prof. Jacobs on his Writing Process
Prof. Steven Jacobs has worked in the Department of Religious Studies for nearly two decades now. As a professor and the Aaron Aronov Chair of Judaic Studies, Dr. Jacobs spends his time lecturing, researching, and especially reading and writing. Beyond his focus in biblical translation and interpretation, Jewish-Christian relations, the Holocaust, and historical and contemporary genocides, Prof. Jacobs has written and edited numerous books and articles across varying subject matters (with one work that was even translated into Japanese and Arabic). […]
Whose Religious Freedom?
The above headline comes from a recent online article at Slate, detailing how current court interpretation of the US’s 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) have resulted in a situation in which claims of religious freedom are increasingly enabling people to sidestep laws that yet others have long taken for granted. Most recently it involves the following case (quoting from the article): […]
Alex Ates Wins SETC Young Scholars Award
Last semester Prof. Merinda Simmons mentored graduate student Alex Ates in an independent study — a program designed to help students earn credit while researching specific material that typically manifests into a conclusive project. Alex, an MFA student in the Department of Theatre and Dance, compiled data on the Free Southern Theater before writing a compelling essay on the groups’ confrontation of “American moral contradictoriness”. The community theater group was founded in Mississippi in 1963 with the goal of combining art and politics on stage to […]
A Social Redescription of Belief
The statement “I believe in…” is sensible only when there are others who do not; it is an agonistic affirmation…. Thus a statement of belief is a convention appropriate to a specific situation, sanctioned by a history and a community. As Wittgenstein notes, “the expression of belief … is just a sentence; — and the sentence has sense only as a member of a system of language; as one expression in a calculus. –Donald Lopez, “Belief” in Critical Terms for […]
It’s Worth Taking A Closer Look
The 2019 call for papers has just come out from NAASR — the North American Association for the Study of Religion — asking for respondents to invited papers that will each address one of four aspects of the field in which we do our work (a format the meetings have used for the past 5 years); the association also announced its upcoming workshops for grad students, all of which will take place at its November annual meeting in San Diego. […]
Prof. Crews — Outside the Classroom
Prof. Emily Crews, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School, recently joined us as an instructor in the Department of Religious Studies. After serving two years as a volunteer in Namibia, she carried out fieldwork in Chicago Pentecostal churches. Currently, she teaches REL 105 Honors Introduction to the Study of Religion and REL 360 Religion in Pop Culture while she finishes her Ph.D. dissertation. […]
A New Honors Day Tradition
We have a new award to announce, which will be given out each year at Honors Day on the balcony: the Alum Liaison Committee Award. This award (funded by alums and the Department) will recognize up to four students (one Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior) who submit a short essay (500 words) on their experiences in our classes, e.g., how they found us, what surprised them about the field, and interesting uses to which it might be put. It’s open […]
Coming Attractions
It’s going to be another busy semester around Manly Hall — REL has some guests coming and things are happening. Along with three candidates visiting campus this month for a tenure-track faculty position that we hope to fill for Fall 2019 (devoted to social theory of Islam) — and we’ll be talking to some students about joining each interviewee for a chat over coffee — we have Prof. Tim Jensen flying in from Denmark to deliver the 17th annual Aronov […]