Skip to content Where Legends Are Made

Tag: Religion

Words and Things: One or Two Things That I Know About Religion

by admin

Anders Klostergaard Petersen is a Professor in the School of Culture and Society in the Department for the Study of Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark. He works in the areas of second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as studying cultural evolution. This post leads off a series of invited posts on the topic of words and things in the study of religion (introduced here). During the last three years two important books have been published highlighting the absence […]

Read More from Words and Things: One or Two Things That I Know About Religion

It May Be Simpler Than You Think

by Russell McCutcheon

I saw the above tweet yesterday, which prompted me to mull over why we generally think that the role of religion is such a complicated thing to study. It occurred to me that it is complicated (i) if you fail to recognize that there’s been trained scholars of religion out there for well over 100 years who have lots to say on these matters but also (ii) if we buy local accounts of it being some ethereal thing that mysteriously […]

Read More from It May Be Simpler Than You Think

When Considering a Career in the Humanities, Think Globally

by admin

Tenzan Eaghll received his Ph.D. from the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, in 2016. He is currently an English Instructor at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok. For his publication and contact information see https://utoronto.academia.edu/TenzanEaghll Ecclesiastes 11 states, “Cast out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back.” Like all biblical passages, this sentence can obviously be interpreted in many ways, but for me it contains a […]

Read More from When Considering a Career in the Humanities, Think Globally

The 4th Annual Day Lecture, Episode 1

by admin

Dr. Ted Trost introduced the fourth annual Day Lecturer. Dr. Trost  teaches courses in American Religious History, Religion and Popular Culture, Bible, and Religious Rhetoric in Literature and Film. This semester Prof. Trost is the Interim Director of New College.   The Day Lecture was generously established by friends and family of the late Zach Day, a graduate of our Department, to honor his memory, and is now an annual event thanks to the memorial fund named in his honor. […]

Read More from The 4th Annual Day Lecture, Episode 1

The Hegemony of Normalcy and the Academic Study of Religion

by admin

Daniel Jones is a graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. His research focuses on critical discourse analysis of the intersections of religion, nature, science, and humanity.  His research interests also pertain to theories of religion, culture, communication, and anthropology. “The hegemony of normalcy is, like other hegemonic practices, so effective because of its invisibility.”-Lennard Davis “We must… take account of the persistence of a model of interpretation and the inversion of its sense, if […]

Read More from The Hegemony of Normalcy and the Academic Study of Religion

The Devil’s in the Details

by Russell McCutcheon

My early book was cited near the start of Chris Kavanagh‘s recent online essay, as an example of a work in the study of religion that — despite him agreeing that there is “much that is valid in such critiques” — seems to constitute “academic minutiae” that we should put behind us, so we can just get on with our work. If you’ve not read the piece, you should. Here’s the closing two paragraphs. I’d like to focus on what […]

Read More from The Devil’s in the Details

Too Hard, Too Soft, Just Right

by Russell McCutcheon

I’ve seen some comments on social media about this recent court decision — click the image to read about it. (If you don’t know much about Pastafarianism then go here.) As a scholar of religion interested not so much in studying religion but, rather, in studying those who use the term to accomplish practical social work (by classifying this or that as religion [or not!]), I admit that I can be a little disappointed when I see other scholars of […]

Read More from Too Hard, Too Soft, Just Right