Last week, Khara Cole, who graduated from UA with a degree in Public Relations and Religious Studies in 2013, lead current students in a career workshop. The casual meeting launched last year as an RSSA initiative and continued this year (organized by Prof. Vaia Touna). The presentation covered everything from resume structure to LinkedIn formatting, and even nonverbal communication during interviews. […]
Tag: Humanities
Prof. Altman Works with APAEP
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. […]
Points for Honesty and Candor…?
This morning I caught a tweet that struck me as just as curious as the responses from some on Twitter. First off, the tweet: A professor who received his PhD from Harvard was asked to give some advice to potential grad school applicants today: [paraphrased] “Um, the job market was good back then and it was super easy. I have no real insight into the current process. I’m sorry.” — Shane Wagoner (@shanewag1) February 2, 2019 It’s curious to me […]
A Visit to Montgomery Museums
Several weeks ago, along with Prof. Ramey, Caity Bell, Savanah Finver, and Keely McMurray (all first-year MA students in the study of religion) took the two hour drive to Montgomery, AL, to explore a variety of historical representations in museums and memorials. They began their tour at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice before visiting the Legacy Museum and finishing at the Alabama State Archives Museum. […]
In or Out?
I’ve got to admit, I’m getting tired of all the “epistemological crisis” talk and the way it’s being pinned on the humanities in general and postmodernism in particular. For the way I see it, members of groups that once benefited from a broad social consensus are now a bit angry that someone has pointed out the link between power and knowledge. Or, to rephrase, it’s curious to me how a socio-political issue is continually portrayed as an epistemological issue, as […]
Public Service Announcement
The day I meet postmodernists whose relativism does not disappear the minute they start talking about salaries and workloads is the day I will take relativism seriously. That’s a quotation I saw posted on social media yesterday, from Steve Bruce‘s new book Researching Religion: Why We Need Social Science. My comment on the site? I find positions one disagrees with are easiest critiqued when one parodies them. Fending off parodies of postmodernism’s influence in our field is a full-time job […]
Studying Religion in Culture in Denver–AAR, SBL, and NAASR 2018!
If Manly Hall is a little quieter in Mid-November, trust that the faculty are keeping busy. Many in our Department will be headed to the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion (AAR, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), and the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR). And as you can see, the Department will be well represented on the program. Prof. Nathan Loewen continues to serve on the executive committee of the International Development and […]
Read More from Studying Religion in Culture in Denver–AAR, SBL, and NAASR 2018!
It’s Time We Tackle This Directly
On Facebook the other day I read a post by a doctoral student in the US who, near done the degree, is venturing into a possible career outside the university; the post repeated a theme we’ve long heard in the humanities: we generally conceive of learning and research too narrowly and, by extension, graduate training ought to be re-calibrated to take into account the many other futures for which we might be preparing students. I admit that I found this […]
The REL Journal Group: Durkheim and Data Edition
The following exchange between Prof. Mike Altman and Sarah Griswold, a student in our MA program, reflects on the recent meeting of the journal reading group, part of our Religion in Culture MA. Mike Altman: Sarah, for our first journal reading group you chose the article “Durkheim with Data: The Databse of Religious History” from a recent issue of JAAR. What’s the gist of the article and why did you think we should read it in our group of MA students […]
Read More from The REL Journal Group: Durkheim and Data Edition
“What Do I Talk About At the Job Interview?”
I’ve written a number of blog posts over the years about the skills that students in the academic study of religion acquire. It’s worth thinking about because too many people seem focused only on the content of an undergrad degree, assuming that the thing that you study is the thing that you’ll do. It’s an effect of the longstanding professionalization of the university, of course (whereby specialties once reserved for separate, two-year colleges or tech schools moved into the university […]