Catie Stewart is a sophomore at the University of Alabama from Madison, Mississippi. She is double majoring in English and Religious Studies and minoring in Psychology. This post was originally written for Dr. Rollens’ course, REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. I recently watched the film A Serious Man for REL 360, and as the plot unfolded, I found myself wondering: What is going on? The storyline is riddled with seemingly disastrous events that all lead up to the movie’s finish, which […]
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.
“Brotherhood, Peace, and Let Loose with their Money”
With the Christian holiday season upon us, and the inevitable media coverage of the so-called “war on Christmas,” it’s worth remembering Lynch v. Donnelly (465 U.S. 668) — a US Supreme Court case from 1984 in which the city of Pawtucket, RI, was sued over the annual nativity scene that it erected, at (admittedly minimal) public expense each year in the downtown shopping area. […]
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Religious Terror
Dana Grant is a senior pursuing a Liberal Arts degree through New College. She is interested in the development of the self and the acquisition of knowledge, and how they affect people’s daily lives as well as the world as a whole. This post was originally written for Dr. Ramey’s course, REL 321: Religion and Identity in South Asia. For quite some time now there has been increasing tension in Myanmar between groups that identify as Buddhist and Muslim. According to […]
An Interview with Ann Taves
An interview with Prof. Ann Taves has just been posted — she is a former President of the American Academy of Religion and is well known for her work on religious experience as well as her interest in applying the finding from cognitive psychology to the study of religion. She’s now at work on a new book, Revelatory Events: Unusual Experiences and New Spiritual Paths, and supervising the interdisciplinary Religion, Experience, and Mind (REM) Lab Group at the University of […]
Deifying Gandhi: National Icons and Moral Authority
Emily Vork is a sophomore majoring in History, Religious Studies, and American Studies. This post was written in response to viewing Lage Raho Munna Bhai as part of Dr. Sarah Rollens’ course, REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities. What makes a person worthy of being treated as a national icon? There are so many people who show up throughout history and stand out, even today. They remain in the collective mind of a region—or a nation, or the world—and history looks fondly upon […]
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The Second Annual Day Lecture
On September 23, 2014 Dr. Kelly Baker presented her “’They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara!’: Zombie Apocalypses in American Religions” as the second annual Day Lecture. The Day Lecture was generously established by friends and family of the late Zach Day, a graduate of our Department, to honor his memory, and is now an annual event thanks to the Zachary Daniel Day Memorial Support Fund. It’s been a few months, but the video of the lecture is now up and running, so […]
“Well I Guess the Biggest Question Would Be Why…”
“It is the fact that we have been preoccupied for a long time with finding in this seamless web of human activities the capacity to break one out and say ‘When they’re doing that one they’re doing religion’…” Watch the video here: This interview with Prof. Smith was conducted by Prof. Alfred F. Benney, of Fairfield University, while attending the annual AAR/SBL in Boston, MA, on November 21, 1999. […]
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Whence Mother Earth?
John D. James is a senior at the University of Alabama majoring in Religious Studies and minoring in General Business. This book review was written for Dr. Michael J. Altman’s REL 370: Empire and the Construction of Religion course. In Mother Earth: An American Story, Sam D. Gill begins to articulate and explain with physical evidence that the term “Mother Earth” is commonly misused and presented to audiences as some common knowledge involving Native American thought and belief. Gill takes […]
You Are What We Say You Are
Robert Scholl is a senior at the University of Alabama studying Middle Eastern Studies. Mr. Scholl comes from Norcross, Georgia. He wrote this post as part of Dr. Ramey’s course, REL 321: Religion and Identity in South Asia. Identity is impacted greatly by those around you and how they perceive you. Due to this fact, both your own identity and your inclusion within society are strongly dependent on these labels used by society to define you. This is the case with […]
Wafer Thin Mint Veneer
As I mentioned briefly yesterday in a post, I was recently a respondent on a panel at our field’s main annual conference; the panel was devoted to whether there could be a consolidation of different trends in inter-religious/interfaith dialogue. Now, this is not what I work on and, as I made plain in my response, my own work would take those who aim toward identifying so-called mutual understanding across religions as being themselves an object of study, inasmuch as it […]