Christopher Hurt is an REL alum who works in tech in Los Angeles. He is best known for his work with the rock ‘n’ roll group, Jamestown Pagans. To put it lightly, things are going on. Whether you’re affiliated with The University of Alabama or not, you’ve likely noticed that there’s a lot happening in the country. And while so much of it may seem like new territory (I don’t think I’ve been in the midst of a pandemic before), […]
Category: Relevance of Humanities
Posts in this category discuss the wider relevance of those tools, methods, and disciplines often grouped together and called the Humanities.
Stay Tuned and Stay Safe
Early on, someone added me to a Facebook group dedicated to issues in higher ed that involve or are impacted by COVID-19. I’ve only posted there a few times but have routinely monitored the posts of others, sometimes finding useful links but often being somewhat perplexed by the sorts of things that I see. For example, consider the post asking others in the group about their routines for cleaning classrooms between classes and how long they’re waiting between classes. As […]
The Uses of Symbolism
There are certainly those scholars of religion who will study yesterday’s episode — when a large number of peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square, just north of the White House, were dispersed by police and the national guard with tear gas, batons, and flash-bang canisters (otherwise known as stun grenades), about a half hour before a curfew went into effect, so that Donald Trump could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church, just across the street from the park, to pose with […]
“Violence is Never the Answer”
If you were watching CNN midday today then you might have heard LZ Granderson‘s interview, commenting on several days of nation-wide protests in the US that have resulted from yet another African American man dying at the hands of the police — this time a man named George Floyd, in Minneapolis. What Granderson said caught my ear, for it’s just the sort of thing that I’d hope that the students trained in our Department would not just understand but be […]
Incoming REL Student Awarded UA’s Francko Graduate Fellowship
We’re very pleased to announce that incoming M.A. student, Phoebe Duke-Mosier, has been awarded UA’s David Francko Graduate Fellowship, which carries full tuition/health insurance, and an annual $25,000 stipend, all of which is committed for both years of her degree. Named after UA’s previous Dean of the Graduate School, one Francko Graduate Fellowship is awarded annually for incoming graduate students. No teaching assistant duties are linked to this award. Phoebe graduated in 2019 from Hamilton College with a degree in […]
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Get Ready….
We have a large incoming class of M.A. students joining us in the Fall and to help them to get set for the new semester we’ve already hosted one Zoom meeting, with our Chair and Graduate Director, to answer some questions about the program. It was a success so we’ve decided to hold a few more voluntary online meetings, to help everyone prep for their Fall courses. […]
Living Room Classrooms and Kitchen Offices
As universities across the country are making plans for whether, and if so how, to return to face-to-face instruction in the Fall semester, I wanted to send out a big thank you to the REL faculty and staff who, like so many others around the U.S. and the world, quickly turned their homes into their offices and their classrooms for the past two months. That means that private internet connections and home utility bills have quite literally kept the lights […]
A Case Study in Framing and Interpretation
Brady Duke is a senior at the University of Alabama majoring in Religious Studies and Latin. After graduation, he plans on pursuing a master’s degree in Classical philology with a concentration in Latin language and literature. Throughout this semester, we have been learning various ways in which individuals, either scholars or laypersons, interact, define, and interpret the past. Consequently, the interpretations stemming from these discourses reflect more about those analyzing the object of study than the object of study itself; while […]
American Examples Fellow
We are very pleased to announce that, in consultation with the REL Graduate Committee as well as Prof. Mike Altman, who heads up our American Examples workshop, Jack Bernardi has been named as our next American Examples Graduate Fellow. Jack earned a B.S. in Pure Mathematics in 2017 and is now nearing the end of his first year in REL’s M.A. program. His research interests are wide, but focused around issues of apocalyptic narratives and climate change. Throughout 2019-20 he […]
Stranger than Fiction: On “Superheroes” and “Essential Workers”
Martin Lund is senior lecturer in religion at Malmö University in Sweden. He is currently working on a co-authored book about the “supervillain” Magneto and a single-authored book about the “superhero” and theory. For many of us, the world seems a pretty strange place right now. What we consider “normal” has been upset and we’re having to make adjustments. People are reacting in different ways, some enthusiastically embracing self-quarantine and others grousing that they can’t go about their business as […]
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