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Category: Student Blog

Posts in this category are written by, or are about, undergraduate students in the Department.

Heineken Beer Dismantles the Traditional Family

by Richard Newton

Caity Bell, a student in Prof. Ramey REL501 course, ponders the invention of tradition. This post originally appeared on the REL 501 Religious Studies & Social Theory: Foundations course blog.   The holiday season is fast upon us and with it a substantial rise in commercials meant to tug upon consumers’ heartstrings, to invoke that special sense of holiday cheer that drives us, no doubt, to purchase more products than we have year-round. If you don’t run from the room […]

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A Return to the Nacirema

by Ellie Cochran

Ryland Hunstad, a student in Prof. Simmons’s REL 100 this past semester, is a sophomore from Denver, Colorado majoring in finance & management information systems, with interests in politics, philosophy, & religion. In the following post he offers some further reflections on a group of people who were originally studied, in the mid-1950s, by the anthropologist, Horace Miner. Since the last expedition to the land of the Nacirema, anthropologists have had several more opportunities to visit these people and observe […]

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Identity in Inter-Korean Politics

by admin
inglis blog

Jacob Inglis is a junior from Huntsville, Alabama majoring in International Studies and minoring in Korean, Asian Studies, and the Randall Research Scholars Program with an interest in Inter-Korean politics and diplomacy. The world watched over the past year as war on the Korean Peninsula, an inevitable outcome according to North Korea, seemed poised to reignite. Amidst the backdrop of the controversial deployment of additional anti-ballistic missile systems, the testing of North Korea’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting […]

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The World Cup and a Grandmother’s Blessing

by admin

Sierra Lawson is an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama; you can visit her website here. The World Cup has been a heavily anticipated sporting event for many countries since the 1930s, representing one of those phenomenon that invite communities to abandon divisive tension in favor of coming together to cheer on the team representing their country. From Mexico to Iran and Morocco, and now even to the United States (whose team failed to qualify […]

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Family Reflections in A River Runs Through It

by admin

Jared Stewart is a Religious Studies Major and Creative Writing Minor. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities. A River Runs Through It was screened in REL 360, a one credit hour course that one may take up to three semesters. The 1992 film about a family living in early twentieth century Montana portrays the lives of two brothers, Norman and Paul Maclean. Norman, the more educated, older brother, moves from his hometown, while Paul, the […]

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On the Worlds We Conceive Within Ourselves…

by admin

Sierra Lawson is an M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama; you can visit her website here. I recently saw an advertisement that featured two lungs, one healthy and another almost unrecognizable as a human organ. This reminded me of a similar comparison at a summer camp I once attended where they showed us a cow’s lung that had supposedly been exposed to a great deal of smoke. While both demonstrations had different end goals, the […]

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A Safe Haven in A River Runs Through It

by admin

Jessica Ramsey is a junior studying Journalism at the University of Alabama. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities. In the second class meeting of REL 360, we viewed A River Runs Through It. This movie is about two sons of a stern minister, one son is reserved and the other is rebellious. It’s about their lives growing up in rural Montana while devoted to fly-fishing, and I thought this movie was quite interesting considering it […]

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