Last night we had the pleasure of hearing from Samantha Bush, an REL grad, about her life after the Capstone and how her REL degree has helped her get her career started. If you missed it last night, here are the highlights thanks to our intrepid team of live tweeters. […]
Category: Guests
From time to time guests are invited to contribute to the blog, such as visiting lecturers or members of other Departments.
A Grad’s Tale Tonight: Ask Questions & Follow the Conversation with #GradTales
We are happy to welcome another Religious Studies graduate back to talk about life after college. Samantha Bush will be joining us to reflect on her time in REL and the skills she learned in our department that have translated to her career after graduation. Follow @StudyReligion // Also, follow the conversation tonight and tweet us your questions for Samantha throughout the day today and tonight at @StudyReligion using #GradTales. See you tonight at 6:30 in the Anderson Room (205) […]
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I Know You Are But What Am I?
By Cara Burnidge Cara Burnidge, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, teaches Religions of the World and researches religion in U.S. foreign relations. She also tweets and, along with her students, curates a Flipboard magazine dedicated to religion in international affairs. Readers beware: this blog post is not about religion. It is a reflection on some of the issues involved in defining an object of study.* This past week, Rachel Maddow kicked off her show with […]
Expat or Immigrant?
By Mary Rebecca Read-Wahidi Becky is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and will graduate just as soon as she finishes writing her dissertation on the Virgin of Guadalupe. She joined the Department of Religious Studies as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Fall of 2012, and was immediately enamored by the charming atmosphere, lofty office space, and pencils with “religion in culture” printed on them. One thing I have gained from my experience as a GTA in […]
Degrees of Resistance, Angles of Repose
Prof. Greg Johnson, former Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, studies repatriation and reburial disputes in American Indian and Hawaiian contexts, as a means to understand the ways religious claims are announced, enlivened, and contested in the contemporary moment. He was a guest lecturer at UA last year and has written the following unsolicited response to a recent post on our grad blog. In your face resistance is a hallmark of Hawaiian […]
Competing Representations
T. Nicole Goulet is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Manitoba and Brandon University. Having completed her Ph.D. at the University of Manitoba on textual representations of Sarada Devi, Dr. Goulet continues her research on the intersection of colonial politics and religious practice in India, with special reference to gender. After an online conversation about the recent Doniger/Penguin affair it was evident that she had something new to say about this episode and so we invited this post. In […]
In the Currents of Change
Savannah Finver is a sophomore at St. Thomas Aquinas College, double majoring in Religious Studies and English. She is an avid reader and writer. She is interested in the impact of religion on American politics and social order. This piece was originally published in STAC’s student newspaper, Thoma, and when it came to our attention we thought it would make an ideal guest post on the REL blog. When I first came to STAC, I declared a Childhood/Special Education major […]
Can Anything be a Ritual?
By Mary Rebecca Read-Wahidi Becky is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and will graduate just as soon as she finishes writing her dissertation on the Virgin of Guadalupe. She joined the Department of Religious Studies as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Fall of 2012, and was immediately enamored by the charming atmosphere, lofty office space, and pencils with “religion in culture” printed on them. Recently in Dr. Ramey’s “Introduction to Religions of the World” class he was […]
Greg Johnson on the Real World in Real Time
On November 6, 2012, the second lecture in the 2012-13 series was presented by Prof. Greg Johnson, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His lecture–entitled, “In the Moment: The Relevance of the Humanities and Social Sciences for the Study of Religion in Real Time”–opened by reflecting on the “Studying Religion in Culture” motto of UA’s Department of Religious Studies and then moved on to examining the manner in which ongoing debates and legal […]
“The Art of Living Well”: Comments on Gregg Lambert’s Lecture
[This post was written by Prof. George McClure of the Department of History, University of Alabama.] Kudos to the Religious Studies Department for launching this timely and important lecture series! Some thoughts on the first lecture follow. To my mind, Lambert’s talk demonstrated or exemplified the crisis in the Humanities, rather than analyzing it. He spoke of human capital, rather than human meaning; economic value, rather than moral values; commodification of self, rather than communion with ideas . Although promising […]
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