Tag: Classification


The Green Chile Controversy

Sign for New Mexico city of Hatch

Kim Davis is a 2003 graduate of REL. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2020 and became an avid explorer, hiker, and trail runner much to the surprise of everyone who knows her. She invites everyone to come experience the Land of Enchantment. When I moved from Alabama to New Mexico, I became an aficionado of New Mexican chile. New Mexican chile is not the meat and beans stew that is prepared in the Southeast, but rather it […]

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When Do I Get to Be a Scholar?

Ellie Dilworth is a sophomore double majoring in Business Management and Religious Studies. Just the other day, I was visiting the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. As I was walking around, I was brainstorming my upcoming blog post on the institution and thinking of my opening remarks. I was chiefly trying to decide whether to identify myself as a “religious studies scholar” or “scholar of the Bible.” In the midst of this conundrum, I had a very religious […]

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A Feature of the System of Governance

A folk healer like Agnis trod a fine line between being someone people called upon when they needed help and someone they blamed when misfortune struck (21:30) So says Lucy Worsley, the joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and also the host of a variety of recent TV shows on British history. The above quotation is twenty minutes into a recent episode on the late sixteenth century Scottish witch trials, specifically focusing on that of Agnis […]

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Advocating on Behalf of the Humanities

NHA logo

Judah Siekkinen is a graduating MA student in REL, who earned his BA from Youngstown State University (in Religious Studies & Geography). On March 15, 2022, I had the privilege to advocate for federal funding for the Humanities on behalf of the state of Alabama. The event was organized by the National Humanities Alliance (NHA). The NHA works to fund various Humanities organizations, most notably the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH). I advocated alongside a colleague from Samford University […]

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Your Sun Bread, Yourself

Every year my kids and I make Sun Bread to commemorate the winter solstice. I got this idea from the place where modern momming dwells: Instagram. My kids (by chance) went to a Waldorf preschool which focuses, among other things, on reinforcing the children’s identification with nature and spending the majority of time outside regardless of weather (born in Germany, Waldorf schools take seriously the German saying “there is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing”). The year is built around […]

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The Satanic Panic Did Not Take Place

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. I recently finished listening to a podcast called Conviction. I listened to the second season specifically. It centers on families affected by the Satanic Panic and since I’ve written about this before, and it’s a big part of my academic interest, I felt compelled to compose another piece. […]

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“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 […]

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