Guests – Page 4 – Studying Religion in Culture

On the Value of the Humanities and Religious Studies

February 2, 2016 by admin

Susan Henking is President of Shimer College, an unconventional great books college in Chicago, Illinois. She got there by going to college as a first generation college goer, majoring in Religion and in Sociology at Duke University and then pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in Religion and Psychological Studies. While there, she fell in love with undergraduate liberal education. Her scholarly work includes co-editing two books, Que(e)rying Religion (1997) and Mourning Religion (2008) as well as many […]

I’m Not That Superstitious

January 27, 2016 by admin

By Ian Alexander Cuthbertson Ian is a Cultural Studies PhD Candidate at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His PhD thesis explores discourse surrounding lucky and protective objects in Montréal, Québec. The label ‘superstitious’ is not a neutral designation. Calling a belief or practice superstitious usually implies that belief or practice is irrational, deluded, or at the very least silly. There is also a sense that human progress has depended upon humankind overcoming its superstitions and delusions, replacing magical […]

A Glimpse into Academia: My Conference Experience in Atlanta, Georgia

December 11, 2015 by admin

Savannah Finver is currently a senior at St. Thomas Aquinas College. She is double-majoring in English and Philosophy/Religious Studies. In the future, she hopes to pursue a graduate degree in Religious Studies. Her interests lie in discourse and ideology studies, with emphasis on religions in the Americas. She enjoys reading, writing, and engaging her friends in philosophical debate. From November 19 to November 23, 2015, I had the privilege of traveling to Atlanta, Georgia with my advisor, Dr. Craig Martin, […]

Why Good Looks Matter

October 7, 2015 by admin

Veikko Anttonen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at the University of Turku, Finland. He was elected Vice-President of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) for the period 2015-2020 at the conference in Erfurt last August. He was the Professor and Chair of Comparative Religion at the University of Turku between 1997-2015. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, stated in an interview that a successor to his post can be a woman if she is good looking, […]

Putting the “Religion” in “American Religion”

June 15, 2015 by admin

Craig Prentiss is a professor of religious studies at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. He is the author of, Staging Faith: Religion and African American Theater from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II (NYU 2014). On Thursday, June 4, I took a flight from Kansas City, Missouri to Indianapolis to attend the Fourth Biennial Conference on Religion American Culture hosted by the the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture at IUPUI. Though it was the […]

What Teachers Need

April 2, 2015 by admin

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 attended the annual conference of a K-12 teacher professional organization. I hoped to gain some urgently needed CEUs (continuing education credits), but I also […]

On The Passive Voice and Nonexistent Agency

March 17, 2015 by admin

Thomas J. Whitley is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religions of Western Antiquity at Florida State University where he studies sexual slander and identity formation in early Christianity. You can read more of his work on his blog and you can follow him on Twitter for the daily minutiae of his life @thomaswhitley. “C.I.A. Funds Found Their Way Into Al Qaeda Coffers” — so read the New York Times notification I received Saturday. The circumlocution was amusing. “Found their way” — […]

Terrorism or Trauma?

February 18, 2015 by admin

Alyssa MacDougall, who earned an undergraduate degree in the study of religion and philosophy at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, is now a master’s student in media studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. Her thesis research is focused on the effects of framing of Muslims in the western media. If you’re interested in her musings about her two cats, religion, media and graduate life, you can find her on twitter under the handle @alyssamacd. […]

Charlie and Us: Religious Violence and the History of Religions

February 6, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

The following guest post is an English translation of the editorial from the current issue of Asdiwal (vol. 9 [2014]), reproduced here with the kind permission of the journal. It is currently among the very few systematic statements on this topic from within our field and therefore deserves to be read and discussed more widely in North America. Learn more about this academic periodical in the study of religion, published in Geneva, Switzerland, here. As we were preparing this edition […]

Undead Zombie Tweets: Everything You Missed From Dr. Kelly Baker’s 2014 Day Lecture in Tweets and GIFs

September 24, 2014 by Michael Altman

Follow @StudyReligion // Last night REL hosted the second annual Zachary Daniel Day Memorial Lecture. Dr. Kelly J. Baker delivered an excellent presentation entitled, “”‘They’re coming to get you, Barbara!’: Zombie Apocalypses in American Religions.” If you missed the lecture or if you just want to revisit the details of the talk check out these tweets courtesy of our Twitter team. […]

Studying Religion in Culture

Ongoing Discussions at the University of Alabama

Category: Guests