Tonight: #Day2018 — our fifth annual Day Lecture. The topic of this series is religion in pop culture and tonight we have Dr. Elijah Siegler visiting campus — he had a busy day yesterday of visiting with faculty and students — who will be talking about the Coen Brothers’ movies. It’s in Smith Hall 205 this year, starting at 7 pm. Looking for a crash course on Coen movies…? See you there! […]
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.
Incoming MA Student Awarded National Alumni Association Graduate Fellowship
We’re extremely pleased to announce that Keeley McMurray, who will be starting our M.A. this Fall, has been awarded a National Alumni Association Graduate Fellowship by the University of Alabama. Keeley will graduate from the University of Alabama in May 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and English. Though her curiosities in the study of religion are broad and still growing, she is currently studying the rhetorical utility of the idea of “sincerely held beliefs” in contemporary […]
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Graduate Council Fellowship Awarded to Incoming M.A. Student
We’re pleased to announce that Savannah Finver, who will begin our M.A. in the Fall, has been awarded a Graduate Council Fellowship, by the School of Graduate Studies, for the 2018-19 academic year. This award, which was also given to current M.A. student Sarah Griswold for 2017-18, is an outright scholarship and entails no teaching assistant duties. Savannah graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas College in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy/Religious Studies. Her interests are focused […]
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But Why Is It Interesting?
I’ve seen a variety of posts on social media about the recently-opened Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. While some have been pointing out the legal problems surrounding how the museum has acquired some of its artifacts, others contest how the museum presents its material. In other words, there are those who see it as nothing less than “evangelical propaganda” — and some of those holding this position seem to be scholars of the bible. […]
“They Shall Take Up Car Keys…”
There’s a new book out about Pentecostal snake handlers in the US. As described on the publisher’s site (click the image above to go there), the book is concerned with addressing the following question: Despite scores of deaths from snakebite and the closure of numerous churches in recent decades, there remains a small contingent of serpent handlers devoted to keeping the practice alive…. What motivates them to continue their potentially lethal practices through the generations? I’ve discussed these groups in […]
“Yes, but…”
If you’re paying attention to US news then you may have been seeing the recent stories leading up to the Senate vote that failed to pass the necessary financial deals to finance the federal government — which resulted in the shutdown that we’re now in. While some parts of the federal government are still open, other parts aren’t. At present, the political drama continues. […]
In Search of…
Students in REL 490 are currently reading a couple of essays by Joseph Kitagawa (d. 1992), longtime (and influential) faculty member at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School (from his 1987 collection), to help set the stage for our eventual reading of some of the works by the late Jonathan Z. Smith. In Kitagawa’s essay, “The History of Religions in America” (1959 — originally published in that once influential set of essays on methodology), we find the following: [O]ne must […]
Car, Jesus, and Punk Rock
Kendrick Jacobs is a senior from Jupiter, Florida majoring in Religious Studies. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities. Repo Man at first glance comes off as being another cult classic film. It captures a moment in American history you can’t read in a book or put your finger on, but if you asked someone who grew up in that time they would know exactly what you were talking about. The strange atmosphere put on by […]
Repo Man Analysis
Klaudio Martini Bardhoku is a freshman Finance major from New Jersey. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities. […]
C.R.A.Z.Y: An REL 360 Response
Ashley Eggert is a junior from Peoria, IL majoring in Religious Studies and on the Pre-Med track. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities. […]