2020 has been a strange and rough year in so many ways, but, speaking as REL’s Graduate Director, our Department still has much to celebrate among our M.A. students and the program’s alums. They did not simply survive the shift to online learning and the challenge of moving to a new city in a pandemic; they have thrived in so many ways. In May, in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic, we graduated 4 M.A. students, our […]
Tag: MA
Is Our MA For You?
It’s that time again, when people are considering applying to graduate programs for the coming academic year. Later in the Fall semester our Graduate Committee will begin making acceptance decisions and will be nominating some of the newly admitted students for competitive, campus-wide fellowships, to help them fund their studies, not to mention making decisions about who will hold the Department’s graduate teaching assistantships. So I thought it was a good time to say a few things about why […]
Not Your Typical MA Program
Our third group of incoming MA students started classes this past August, joining four full-time MA students now in their second year. So we thought it was time to introduce them all to you, and ask them to tell us what they’re studying — from people, places and things to the digital tools useful in doing their work. For more information on REL’s Religion in Culture MA, visit our website and contact Prof. Merinda Simmons, our Graduate Director. Thanks to […]
Internships as Part of the REL M.A. Program
We recently sat down with Caity Bell, a second year M.A. student in Religious Studies, and talked about internship opportunities. This past summer she helped frame historic representations during her internship with the Landmarks Association of DeKalb County (pictured above). 1. How did you first hear about the chance to do an internship as part of your MA in Religious Studies? Caity: I first heard about the opportunity during one of our colloquium sessions. Dr. Merinda Simmons, our Grad Director, […]
Incoming MA Student Awarded National Alumni Association Graduate Fellowship
We’re extremely pleased to announce that Keeley McMurray, who will be starting our M.A. this Fall, has been awarded a National Alumni Association Graduate Fellowship by the University of Alabama. Keeley will graduate from the University of Alabama in May 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and English. Though her curiosities in the study of religion are broad and still growing, she is currently studying the rhetorical utility of the idea of “sincerely held beliefs” in contemporary […]
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Graduate Council Fellowship Awarded to Incoming M.A. Student
We’re pleased to announce that Savannah Finver, who will begin our M.A. in the Fall, has been awarded a Graduate Council Fellowship, by the School of Graduate Studies, for the 2018-19 academic year. This award, which was also given to current M.A. student Sarah Griswold for 2017-18, is an outright scholarship and entails no teaching assistant duties. Savannah graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas College in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy/Religious Studies. Her interests are focused […]
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Wondering what our MA students study…?
Yes, REL has an MA Program now — our students recently created a curated, online project, for one of their classes, to test out how to use a new software. Want to know what else they’re doing? Heard of Our M.A.? from UA Religious Studies. Interested? Then check out the first half of our latest podcast episode to hear more from Emma, Sarah, and Sierra. […]
Digital Religious Studies
If you’ve followed our Department then you might know about our new MA, which started this Fall. While it’s focused on helping students develop their social theory skills, it also has a focus on the digital skills that have become increasingly relevant in scholarship — whether to communicate with wider audiences, via a variety of online projects (what might be called the public humanities), or to enhance the traditional research that we do. That’s why every incoming group of grad […]
On the Right Track
Did you happen to see the job ad posted for a position at the National Humanities Center (in North Carolina)? […]
There’s a New M.A. in Town
What better way to mark fifty years of studying religion at the University of Alabama than to institute our first graduate degree — something that’s been in planning for several years now? […]