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Category: Guests

From time to time guests are invited to contribute to the blog, such as visiting lecturers or members of other Departments.

Excerpt from Gregg Lambert’s “The Future of the Humanities”

by Russell McCutcheon

On September 25, 2012, Prof. Gregg Lambert of Syracuse University’s Humanities Center, joined us in Tuscaloosa to present a public lecture entitled “The Future of the Humanities”*–the inaugural lecture in this year’s series on the place of the Humanities and Social Sciences in the contemporary university. As with all future talks in this series, we plan to post an excerpt from the lecture soon after it is delivered, inviting comments from those in attendance or from those reading this blog, […]

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The Relevance of Research: Religions as Vestigial States

by Steven Ramey

[By Naomi Goldenberg] My work at present is focused on developing the hypothesis that religions can be productively thought of as vestigial states.  I consider this to be one way of de-essentializing, demystifying and deconstructing the category of religion.  In general, the concept directs theory along two trajectories:  one is the analysis of particular histories in which ‘religions’ are formed or solidified in distinction to ‘states’; another is a focus on classifications which current governments use to delineate spheres of […]

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