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Category: Series

The REL blog has a variety of ongoing series that are routinely updated.

Words and Things: Happily Ever After Religion

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Richard Newton is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Elizabethtown College. His scholarship focuses on the anthropology of scriptures. He also curates the student-scholar collaborative blog, Sowing the Seed: Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @seedpods. (The introduction to the series is posted here.) Brent Nongbri begins his approach to religious studies with memory of a problem. The problem is his inability to translate the English word, “religion” into the Khasi language of his fatherland. […]

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Words and Things: Modern Concepts, Ancient Interests

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Matt Sheedy (Ph.D) lectures in the department of religious studies at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and is associate editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. His research interests include critical social theory, theories of secularism, atheism and science v. religion in the public realm,  as well as representations of Christianity, Islam, and Native traditions in popular and political culture. His dissertation offers a critical look at Jürgen Habermas’s theory of religion in the public sphere. (The introduction to […]

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Words and Things: One or Two Things That I Know About Religion

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Anders Klostergaard Petersen is a Professor in the School of Culture and Society in the Department for the Study of Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark. He works in the areas of second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as studying cultural evolution. This post leads off a series of invited posts on the topic of words and things in the study of religion (introduced here). During the last three years two important books have been published highlighting the absence […]

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Of Words and Things: Introduction to a Guest Series

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A longstanding debate across disciplines arose once again at a co-sponsored panel at the conference of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR), last November, during a session (pictured above) devoted to reviewing Brent Nongbri’s recent book, Before Religion. […]

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A Response to “Responsible Research Practices”: Index

by Russell McCutcheon

As each successive part in this ongoing series is made posted, this index page will be updated with links. Introduction: Our Highest Ideals Part 1: General Reflections Part 2: Academic Freedom Part 3: Do No Harm Part 4: Research on Human Subjects Part 5: Sources and Interpretations Part 6: Irrevocable Commitments Part 7: Methodological Pluralism Part 8: Diverse Approaches Part 9: Broader Public Part 10: Peer Review Part 11: Research Assistants Part 12: Highest Standards Afterword: And Isn’t It Ironic? […]

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A New Series Kicks Off: Grad Tales Extra

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Zac Parker graduated with a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Alabama in 2011. Here he helps us kick off our new, ongoing series, Grad Tales Extra, in which grads not able to join us on campus, to discuss the relevance of their degree, can drop us a line instead, to update us on what they’ve done since leaving Manly Hall. During the year following graduation, I spent many months traveling, camping, and backpacking around the country, taking […]

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A Good Book

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Ever wonder if your professors have really read all those books in their offices? Well, they certainly have, and a few of those books have made lasting impressions on them. In our new series A Good Book, the REL faculty members each choose a book and discuss its influence on them — as a student, a scholar, and as a teacher. Eleanor Finnegan Merinda Simmons Mike Altman Sarah Rollens Steven Ramey Russell McCutcheon Nathan Loewen Ted Trost Steve Jacobs Richard Newton […]

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