American Religious History – Studying Religion in Culture

New Additions to REL

March 29, 2024 by Steven Ramey

Photos of Dr. Hannah Jung and Jeff Turner

Two new faculty joining REL in Fall 2024 […]

Sneaker Culture: An Item-Based Religious Movement?

January 10, 2022 by admin

Drew Whinery, from Tuscaloosa, AL, is a senior majoring in Music, with a minor in Criminal Justice. The following post developed from a presentation originally created for an REL class with Prof. Lauren Horn Griffin. As a college student, I tend to stay up with trends. One that has been popular for years is known as “Sneaker Culture.” The idea behind Sneaker Culture is that certain shoes, or sneakers, are released in a limited supply and many people seek them […]

Prof. Altman Works with APAEP

February 11, 2019 by Morgan Frick

a drawing of a professor lecturing a class

Religious Studies Professor Michael Altman will be teaching with the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project (APAEP) once a week this spring semester. He will be leading a course titled Religion in America to incarcerated students at the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, AL. […]

Announcing the 2019 American Examples Participants

October 18, 2018 by Michael Altman

Earlier this fall we announced a new working group for early career scholars of religion in America, American Examples. Thanks to funding from REL and the College of Arts and Sciences we will be hosting 6 participants on campus for a workshop that will produce an anthology of new papers taking a new approach to the study of religion in America. We are happy and excited to announce the participants in the inaugural year of the working group: For more […]

A Word from the Balcony

October 3, 2014 by Russell McCutcheon

A yesterday a colleague posted a blog with three hypotheses on the topic of studying a thing called American Religious History — concerning how it may very well be a nationalist project, from start to finish (no matter how it is done), and that it is a discourse that may have historical continuities with (and practical effects akin to) the world religious discourse that so many in our field now claim to critique. His point, as I read him, was […]