Justin Dearborn is a 2007 UA graduate of New College, with a Depth Study in “Religion, Social Structure, and Culture Studies,” who was a frequent member of REL seminars. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is the US National Sales Manager for an Icelandic Craft Brewery. As I sit here on a Saturday afternoon, warm coffee in hand and enjoying the weekend, I find myself feeling both nostalgic and lucky. Nostalgic considering Dr. McCutcheon’s request for REL Grads to […]
Tag: Relevance of the Humanities
We Are RELephant!
Alumni from our department emphasize how various skills that they developed in Religious Studies have been useful in a range of careers (e.g., on the Graduate page of this blog here, here, here, and here and through our Grad Tales events). Creative problem solving helps when planning language lessons or legal arguments. Recognizing the range of perspectives and dangers of stereotypes can aid in developing marketing strategies. Clear communication can assist in preparing a persuasive business plan or grant application. […]
Potential Enemies
I’ve been watching some episodes from season one (2014) of “Madam Secretary” — the story of a CIA analyst turned UVA Poli Sci prof who gets tapped to become the US Secretary of State. Her husband, Henry, a former Marine pilot, is a theology prof at Georgetown — you know this because he’s earnest and seems to regularly talk about Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. […]
Now Rex Knows — Do You?
Marketing and the Academic Study of Religion
What connects red lipstick, racecars, and health care? The study of religion, of course! (Well, sort of.) Khara Cole, a 2013 graduate with a double major in Religious Studies and Public Relations, has found the skills that she developed in Religious Studies particularly important, as she designs products and their implementation for a health insurance company. She returned to campus last week to talk about her experiences working in the corporate world. The tasks of writing persuasive business proposals and […]
Applying Skills Outside the Classroom
In some of our courses faculty in the department focus on the problem of definition in the study of religion — what counts as a religion (more importantly, for whom) and what are the practical implications of distinguishing a this from a that. They also often talk about the broad relevance of the skills that students acquire in the Humanities. So I had all this in mind while listening to a story on National Public Radio this morning, on making […]
Is Your Humanities Degree Relevant?
Are the Humanities relevant? Do you use Slack? Do you know what Stewart Butterfield’s (its founder) undergrad and grad degrees were in? If the following excerpt from this article makes you interested…. …, then you should read it. […]
How Not to Be a Senior Scholar
I remember almost two years ago when American historian Edmund Morgan died. I had read Morgan’s Visible Saints as part of my doctoral exams but, not being a historian by training or researching the colonial period, I hadn’t read much else of his work. But after his death I read a lot about Morgan. I read stories from his graduate students, from his colleagues, and from scholars who had come into contact with the man one way or another. It seemed […]
What’s the Point?
As discussions about the relevance of what we do in religious studies, and academia in general, have become more common lately, my own emphases have coalesced around the skills that the humanities help scholars (whether students or faculty or interested blog readers) develop. And that emphasis on skills is not limited to our work in the classroom. […]
Why Do I Blog?
As a follow-up to the other day’s post on whether early career people ought to consider taking on such social media as blogging, in preparation for the job market, I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect a little more explicitly on why I blog. What I’ve come up with is surely no definitive list but it’s a start at some of the reasons. […]