Often in the study of religion you’ll hear people saying things like “I don’t do theory” (yes, there’s often an emphasis on the verb, akin to saying “I don’t do [insert something with which you disagree or dislike]) or maybe you’ll come across a conversation on when to introduce theory to undergraduate students — right from their first course or, fearing that will alienate them from the field, only doing so later, “once they’ve already got the basics,” as some […]
Tag: historicize
Looking Over and Overlooking
Thanks @McCutcheonSays for this mention of my online syllabus, in his discussion of Janet Jakobsen’s piece on relhttps://t.co/EkJiVE3hPM — Malory Nye (@malorynye) October 1, 2017 Malory Nye’s tweet, the other day, got me thinking… So I replied: For a while, now, I’ve had this feeling: as happens with any new and successfully reproduced social developments (or what advocates just call advances), newcomers to the group tend to normalize them. Which is a wonderful luxury, if you think about it — […]
“A Horse is a Horse, of Course of Course”
In a review essay posted recently at the Boston Review — entitled “Holy Wars: Secularism and the Invention of Religion” — James Chappel looked at several recent books on religion and modernity. In that article he wrote as follows: […]
Historicizing Belief
Have you seen the video making the rounds of a Donald Trump supporter — who, it turns out, is New Hampshire Republican State Representative Susan DeLemus? If not, it’s worth watching if you’re a scholar of religion. […]
It’s Complicated
In an earlier post I wondered aloud what the Humanities were, doing so by too briefly surveying some of the standard arguments that we often hear when this topic comes up. I concluded by asking readers what they thought the Humanities were, and left it at that. To be fair, I ought to answer my own question. And so… […]