Travis Cooper is a PhD candidate in anthropology and religious studies at Indiana University. His research interests include method and theory in the study of religion, discourse analysis, social media, critical ethnography, digital anthropology, and social theory. He’s currently dissertating on the boundary maintenance strategies of emerging evangelical communities after the New Media turn. I recently read and re-read Connor Wood’s post, “Social Media is Toxic. Religious Studies Tells Us Why,” and found my initially troubled impressions confirmed. Wood’s account of […]
Category: Guests
From time to time guests are invited to contribute to the blog, such as visiting lecturers or members of other Departments.
Whose Loss is it Anyway?
Rebekka King is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research focuses on the negotiation of boundaries within North American Christianity. She teaches course on Method and Theory, Anthropology of Religion, and Contemporary Christianity. 2016 was the year of the loser. The more you lost, the better you were, especially if you shared it on Facebook. “I have all of David Bowie’s albums in vinyl. I’m going to post a picture of my collection.” “I […]
There’s No Such Thing as “Cultural Memory”
Matthew C. Baldwin is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Mars Hill University, where he teaches ancient history, Biblical literature and classical Biblical languages, and method and theory for religious studies. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Read his earlier post on cultural memory here. Que reste-t-il de nos amours Que reste-t-il de ces beaux jours Une photo, vieille photo De ma jeunesse Que reste-t-il des billets doux Des mois d’ avril, des rendez-vous Un souvenir qui me poursuit Sans cesse… […]
On “Cultural Memory”
Matthew C. Baldwin is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Mars Hill University, where he teaches ancient history, Biblical literature and classical Biblical languages, and method and theory for religious studies. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Have you noticed the recent explosion of interest the category of “memory” among scholars of history, culture, and “religion”? A WorldCat search of books published since 2000 in “su:Religion” turns up 522 works with the word “memory” in a title. Looking at peer […]
Call for Participants “…But What Do You Study?”: A NAASR Workshop on Succeeding in the Job Market
Michael Graziano is an instructor of Religious Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. If the phrase “academic job market” makes you feel like the picture above you’re not alone. There’s no shortage of posts, essays, tweets, and columns dispensing advice on the job market: what to study, how to shape a CV, and what to say in a cover letter. The rules—both written and unwritten—can seem inscrutable. That’s in part why, for the second year in a row, NAASR will […]
The Hegemony of Normalcy and the Academic Study of Religion
Daniel Jones is a graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. His research focuses on critical discourse analysis of the intersections of religion, nature, science, and humanity. His research interests also pertain to theories of religion, culture, communication, and anthropology. “The hegemony of normalcy is, like other hegemonic practices, so effective because of its invisibility.”-Lennard Davis “We must… take account of the persistence of a model of interpretation and the inversion of its sense, if […]
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Constructing Judaism and Claiming Christianity: Modern Jewish Philosophy in an Age of Theory
Robert Erlewine is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University where he teaches courses related to philosophy of religion and Judaism. He is the author of two monographs, Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010) and Judaism and the West: From Hermann Cohen to Joseph Soloveitchik (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). In recent years, in the academic study of religion there have been rather public disputes about the nature of religious […]
Report from the Public Universities Chairs Workshop
Dr. Kevin Schilbrack (pictured above, right) is a professor of Religious Studies and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University. He was recently at the University of Alabama for the inaugural workshop for public university Religious Studies department chairs and offers the following report. Like many other department chairs, I suspect, I became chair after years of teaching, writing, and generally being collegial – but I received little or no training on how to be […]
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Join Us for the 2016 Aronov Lecture Tomorrow at 7pm: “Democracy in Black — The Value Gap”
Our annual Aronov Lecture will be held tomorrow night at 7pm in Lloyd Hall room 38. We are very pleased to welcome Eddie S. Glaude from Princeton University. His lecture is titled “Democracy in Black — The Value Gap.” You can find out more about Prof. Glaude’s work in this recent Salon interview about his newest book, Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. And be sure to follow the conversation, comments, questions, and live-tweeting of the Aronov lecture […]
Classification Matters: Mindfulness in the Classroom
By Andie Alexander Andie Alexander earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and History in 2012. She is now completing her M.A. in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Andie also works as the online Curator for the Culture on the Edge blog. A course I am TAing for this semester opens each class with a mindfulness exercise for calming and finding one’s center. It starts, “Plant your feet firmly on the floor, adjust your posture,” moving eventually to noticing breathing patterns […]
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