Interpretation – Page 2 – Studying Religion in Culture

Coming Attractions: REL 490 Capstone Senior Seminar

October 29, 2017 by admin

REL 490 is the Department’s senior seminar, that’s offered each Spring. Required of all majors, its topic regularly changes as does the professor who offers it. The goal of the course is to offer some sort of test case or example that can provide an opportunity for students with wide interests to mull over the skills that were gained throughout the degree. This Spring it’s Prof. McCutcheon who is teaching the course and the topic is the work of Jonathan […]

“The Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

March 4, 2017 by Russell McCutcheon

Over on social media the other day, I came across the following tweet, posted at NPR’s site. These turkeys trying to give this cat its 10th life pic.twitter.com/VBM7t4MZYr — J… (@TheReal_JDavis) March 2, 2017 My comment, used above as this post’s opening pic, wasn’t completely sarcastic. […]

On Intention and Interpretation

November 30, 2016 by Andie Alexander

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. […]

What if Harry Potter is Sacred?

September 21, 2016 by Steven Ramey

When we label something “sacred,” that designation often changes how we engage it. Discussing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as a sacred text, the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text illustrates this engagement and the ways readers interpret from their own experiences. Both hosts in this podcast have a particular interest in the category of the sacred. Vanessa Zoltan is a Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, and Casper ter Kuile is studying to minister to those who identify as […]

Skillz

September 10, 2016 by Russell McCutcheon

For sometime I’ve been concerned that the American Academy of Religion would venture into the waters of learning outcomes and assessment. But now one of its committees is working on this and its the topic of a leadership workshop, offered by the Academic Religions committee, at the upcoming annual meeting. […]

Factual Assertion or Persuasive Argumentation?

August 29, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

I finally got around to reading Tom Tweed’s recent Journal of Religion essay the other day, “After the Quotidian Turn: Interpretive Categories and Scholarly Trajectories in the Study of Religion Since the 1960s.” I’ve got a paper of my own in which I argue that we should turn our attention toward studying what I’ll just call the common, so I thought I should see what Tom had to say — those who advocate for studying so-called everyday religion, such as […]

A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 9: Broader Public

July 31, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

This is an installment in an ongoing series on the American Academy of Religion’s recently released draft statement on research responsibilities. An index of the complete series (updated as each article is posted) can be found here. Much like the earlier post on doing human subjects research, we find a truism enshrined in the draft document’s eighth bullet point (at least in the opening clause; I include the ninth also since it too is related): I’m not sure if there […]

A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 5: Sources and Interpretations

July 22, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

This is an installment in an ongoing series on the American Academy of Religion’s recently released draft statement on research responsibilities. An index of the complete series (updated as each article is posted) can be found here. What should be clear from my previous comments is that I don’t think the draft document simply needs some editing or a few words added to it, in order to make it work. Instead, I think the entire exercise needs to be rethought, […]

What’s the (Sacred) Point?

June 30, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

Have you heard the one about Howard Carson, the amateur archeologist, who, in the year 4022, landed “at the bottom of an ancient shaft,” and then discovers what he decides is “a long-forgotten tomb”? But which readers know to be just the ruins of a motel? […]

“A Reluctance to Put the Religious Label”

February 21, 2015 by Russell McCutcheon

Did you hear about the White House summit this past week? It was in the news a fair bit and was on “countering violent extremism” — not just those attributed to Muslims but, because such adjectives as Islamic or Jihadist are often glued pretty tightly, at least in some North American and European media and politics, to the words violence or terrorism, that angle on the event has received a lot of attention. […]

Studying Religion in Culture

Ongoing Discussions at the University of Alabama

Tag: Interpretation