Casey A’Hearn completed their MA in Religion in Culture from the department in May 2024 and will be starting their PhD at Princeton in August 2024. In 2008, a group of Ravidassia practitioners held a parade in Bedford, England to celebrate the birthday of Guru Ravidas. It was this image taken by Mr. Simon Speed that caught my attention. I am not a scholar of Ravidassia, nor am I particularly familiar with their traditions. But I have learned that they […]
Category: Grad Blog
Posts in this category are written by, or are about, graduates of the Department.
Close & Distant Reads of the REL Blog’s “2014” with Voyant Tools
Trevor Linn compares close and distant readings of the REL blog’s “2014 data” using the NLP platform Voyant Tools. […]
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American Examples S04 E01: “Religion Scholars are not human”
As an MA student in the “public humanities” core course at REL, Lauren Thompson observed a 2023 American Examples workshop. After making a video, she realized something about religion scholars: they’re inhuman. Read more to find out how and why! […]
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How Did We Get This Information? Questions from a Religious Studies Perspective
Aidan Nuttall is asking applied questions about data production in his second year of MA studies at REL. […]
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“Making the thing is the thing”: Observing the 2023 American Examples Cohort
REL MA student Trevor Linn observed the 2023 American Examples public humanities workshop. Here’s what he found! […]
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Seeing Joseph Smith Jr.’s First Vision as an Ideology
Casey A’Hearn is an REL MA student who uses Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology to understand Joseph Smith Jr.’s First Vision.
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The Green Chile Controversy
Kim Davis is a 2003 graduate of REL. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2020 and became an avid explorer, hiker, and trail runner much to the surprise of everyone who knows her. She invites everyone to come experience the Land of Enchantment. When I moved from Alabama to New Mexico, I became an aficionado of New Mexican chile. New Mexican chile is not the meat and beans stew that is prepared in the Southeast, but rather it […]
What Can You Do With a Degree in Religion?
Al McGowen majored in Religious Studies (minoring in Social Work and English) while at UA in the late-1970s, after having served in the USAF during the Vietnam era. He went on to earn an M.Div. from Memphis Theological Seminary and did his clinical training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Al became a Fellow In The College of Chaplains, which later became the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC), and a Board Certified Chaplain, a Clinical Member of the Association for […]
The Inquisition’s Baggage
Christopher Hurt is an REL alum who works in Los Angeles. He is best known for his work with the rock ‘n’ roll group, Jamestown Pagans. Have you ever seen Inquisición (film, 1977)? If you’re a lover of period-piece horror movies, like I am, then you’ll want to check it out. Mondo Macabro has a Blu-ray release that is standout. The subject matter calls to mind this data… Several years into his papacy John Paul II initiated a commission to […]
Have You Read the Latest Bulletin for the Study of Religion?
Prof. Richard Newton introduces us to the latest iteration of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, now a joint collaboration between Equinox Publishing and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. […]
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