I recall a conversation I once had, some years ago, about the possibility that our department might try to hire someone who worked on Asia, i.e., that we had submitted a proposal for such a position, but, of course, who knows if we’ll get it. The person with whom I spoke, who did his own work on Asia, replied, a little incredulously, that of course we’d get the position, no? After all, consider how important Asia is to understanding world […]
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.
Extra Extra, Read All About It
Whereas an earlier generation of scholars of religion — say, those in the 1960s — argued that the relevance of our field was to be found in its uniqueness and autonomy from all other disciplines, we here at the University of Alabama think that our field’s contribution is in its ability to contribute to our understanding of culture-wide processes and effects. […]
Les petits pas: A Response to Baby Steps
By Kim Davis Kim Davis earned her B.A. in French and Religious Studies from the University of Alabama in 2003. She went on to get her Masters in French Linguistics and Literature in 2007 and a Masters in Secondary Language Pedagogy in 2010, both from UA. Kim now teaches French and Mythology at Tuscaloosa County High School. I recently have gone through a period of questioning how much I have been able to accomplish in my job as a French […]
Honors Day 2014
Yes, campers, it’s that time of year again — time to wash behind your ears and dust off the good shoes: Honors Day is coming! […]
Get Ready to Run
While working on a Masters degree, I recall an early-career professor in whose office a friend and I would regularly meet for one of our classes. As I recall, he was still working on finishing his own Ph.D. at the time and on his wall he had nicely mounted a large piece of interesting-looking driftwood, all gnarly and weathered, which had been signed by a bunch of people. One day we asked what it was. He replied with a story […]
“Would You Still Call Yourself an Asianist?”
In December 2013, Prof. Russell McCutcheon sat down with Prof. Steven Ramey to discuss how Ramey’s work on Asia has transitioned in the past several years. While he still focuses on Asia in much of his work, “… a shift in research focus from inter-religious cooperation to diaspora religion, eventually studying south Asian communities in the U.S. south, led the way to a far broader interest not only in social theory but in the practical implications of categorization for creating identities.” […]
Baby Steps
If you’re reading this blog then you may know that we’re a small undergraduate degree-granting Department that has a number of things going on — from a couple of longstanding lecture series to a newly invented annual undergrad research symposium, from an active student association and Facebook page, to some faculty who actively collaborate with one another on their own research. We bring grads back to talk about their post-B.A. lives and careers, we have this blog with posts from […]
The Humanities, the UK, and Southern Food
Prof. Richard King, professor of Buddhist and Asian Studies at the University of Kent, sits down to discuss his work, as well as the Humanities, higher education in the United Kingdom, and even veggie corndogs. Dr. King delivered the 12th annual Aronov Lecture, titled “From Mysticism to Spirituality: Colonial Legacies and the Reformulation of ‘the Mystic East,’” so be on the lookout for the posting of the lecture video. Also, check out this lecture getting some press in the UK. […]
UA at SECSOR
This past weekend, several faculty members and one former student presented research and networked with colleagues at the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Andie Alexander, a recent grad and office worker extraordinaire, presented a paper entitled “Shifting the Focus: Understanding the Teller Behind the Tale” for a Method and Theory in the Study of Religion undergraduate research panel. Dr. Finnegan presented a paper entitled “The Digital Discourses of Muslim Environmentalist,” which tracked […]
The Proclaimers
I’ve seen a lot of early career people teaching — of course, I was once one of them, like us all, back when, at the University of Tennessee in the early 1990s, I would write out entire lectures the day or night before and then read them each class, sticking closely to my text — and they unfortunately share a trait with some of their older, supposedly experienced colleagues: they’re proclaimers. Sitting at the back of a classroom, during the […]