The Department of Religious studies is pleased to announce that Emily D. Crews has been hired as an Instructor, to begin work in August 2018. Emily is a Ph.D. candidate in History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her dissertation project, now nearing completion, traces the relationship between movement and identity formation in the context of Nigerian immigration to the United States, exploring the ways in which Pentecostalism condition, and is conditioned by, the attempts of people […]
Tag: Identity
“I’m Laughing at Clouds…”
You likely know the scene: a man in love, drops his sweetheart off at her place, then proceeds to sing and dance, despite the inclement weather. […]
On Immigration, Identity, and White Privilege
By Andie Alexander Andie Alexander earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and History in 2012. She is currently working on her M.A. in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Andie also works as the online Curator for the Culture on the Edge blog. Hi, I’m Andie, and I’m an immigrant. But we’ll get to that. As I wrote this on Election Day in the U.S., I, like many of you I suspect, got very little work done. Instead, I was tuning in on […]
Read More from On Immigration, Identity, and White Privilege
Messing Up at Starbucks, or the Ritual Order of Choice
I’m a regular customer at Starbucks. Several times a week, I walk into one, order a drink, wait for it, say thank you, and walk out. I’m sure many of you do the same thing pretty often, if not every day, without even thinking about it. But I once failed miserably at this banal procedure. It was my first year in the US and I had just arrived from Japan, so many things were still new to me. But Starbucks […]
Read More from Messing Up at Starbucks, or the Ritual Order of Choice
Home, Sweet Home
By Andie Alexander Andie Alexander earned her B.A. in Religious Studies and History in 2012. She is now pursuing her M.A. in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Andie also works as the online Curator for the Culture on the Edge blog. When I moved to Boulder, CO for graduate school two years ago, I entered the program with a cohort of students from all over the U.S., so — perhaps unsurprisingly — one of the immediate questions everyone asked was, […]
The End is Here and Brings Big Things
The semester is complete, and our seniors have walked across that stage. All semester I have had the privilege of working with the Capstone Senior Seminar, applying questions and ideas from our work to a broad range of topics and presenting them through various social media, from Twitter to Tumblr. Their final Digital Projects are now published, so you should take a look at the range of their creative approaches to expressing the significance of critical questions to many topics, […]
Making Identity by Expelling the Other in Their Midst
A Facebook friend just posted the above — while it’s a good idea (think about it: those so-called walks of shame [or walks of resistance and triumph?] that protestors are forced to do at his rallies…, they serve a purpose, no?), I think he’s already done enough analysis to explain it. And if you don’t know what he’s talking about, then here’s something that took place at a rally in Kentucky from just a couple days ago. […]
Read More from Making Identity by Expelling the Other in Their Midst
Are you American American?
By Mary Read-Wahidi Dr. Read-Wahidi has been an instructor for REL 100 online course since 2013. She received her PhD in Biocultural Medical Anthropology from the University of Alabama in December 2014, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University. She works extensively with Mexican immigrants in rural Mississippi on projects related to devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe and health-related disparities. Currently, she is involved in a USAID-funded research project aimed at empowering women smallholder farmers and improving household […]
You Ain’t No Conservative, Bruv
Did you see the video of the man arrested after he attacked people in a London subway with a knife? “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” declared an onlooker. Or, did you hear how Paul Ryan responded to Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the United States? “This is not conservatism,” he said into the cameras. I think Amber Phillips is right in her analysis of these two statements in her blog post at The Washington Post. These moments of […]
It is Borders that Divide Us, as well as Our Ability to Recognize Them
Last week’s conclusion of the Canadian federal election marks another milestone in the exercise of democracy. Ballots were cast. A new party obtained a majority (of seats). The election is now over. I did not take part in that election. Despite being a Canadian citizen, I live outside the borders of the country, and I do not plan on moving back at a definite time in the future. Therefore, at least according to my reading, I am ineligible to participate […]
Read More from It is Borders that Divide Us, as well as Our Ability to Recognize Them