The label “college town” can produce a variety of expectations. Having spent several years attending UNC Chapel Hill, my expectations of a college town derive from some specific observations. When I traveled to Ithaca, New York, at the end of September to participate in Cornell University’s South Asia Program Seminar, the plane trip heightened my expectations for a thriving college town, with a professor sitting beside me and another seated in front of me, and someone reading a journal article […]
Tag: Steven Ramey
The Politics of Misconceptions
In a recent blog post, my colleague, Mike Altman, makes a crucial point; after quoting a site that describes early European scholarship on Buddhism as being based on earlier “misconceptions, he writes: […]
3rd Annual Dinner at Dr. Ramey’s
As they have for three years now, Prof. Steven Ramey and his wife, Terra Rodgers, hosted the final RSSA dinner for the department. From the homemade Indian food and desserts, to the South Indian coffee after dinner, and the wonderful conversation in between, it was a fantastic night! We even had a few musical performances from Raj and Han, Dr. Ramey’s sons, as well as our own Zach Price. There was a fantastic turnout from students and faculty to family and […]
The Relevance of “Church”
In our classrooms, we often discuss the challenge of defining categories like religion or the sacred. While those questions sometimes appear quite abstract, separated from the issues that intersect with daily life, the relevance of such analyses can be particularly relevant. An NPR story last night on Daystar, a “religious TV network”, focused on questions of categories and their practical implications. In short, since Daystar classifies itself as a church, a classification that the IRS accepts, the TV network does […]
“Would You Still Call Yourself an Asianist?”
In December 2013, Prof. Russell McCutcheon sat down with Prof. Steven Ramey to discuss how Ramey’s work on Asia has transitioned in the past several years. While he still focuses on Asia in much of his work, “… a shift in research focus from inter-religious cooperation to diaspora religion, eventually studying south Asian communities in the U.S. south, led the way to a far broader interest not only in social theory but in the practical implications of categorization for creating identities.” […]
On the Shoulders of Others
Challenging the insularity of academic research is important for all fields, including the human sciences, as Kelly Baker writes in her recent post about Neil deGrasse Tyson. This departmental blog, and several others where faculty in the department publish (Culture on the Edge, Huffington Post, Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Thinking Out Loud . . .), are an aspect of this process of making scholarship accessible to a wider audience, as these sites attract non-academic readers, no matter how […]
UA at SECSOR
This past weekend, several faculty members and one former student presented research and networked with colleagues at the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Andie Alexander, a recent grad and office worker extraordinaire, presented a paper entitled “Shifting the Focus: Understanding the Teller Behind the Tale” for a Method and Theory in the Study of Religion undergraduate research panel. Dr. Finnegan presented a paper entitled “The Digital Discourses of Muslim Environmentalist,” which tracked […]
Coming Soon…
On March 4, 2014 at 7:00pm in Gorgas 205, Dr. Richard King, University of Kent, will be presenting his “From Mysticism to Spirituality: Colonial Legacies and the Reformulation of ‘the Mystic East” for the 12th annual Aronov Lecture for the Department of Religious Studies. Prof. King’s work focuses on the history of European colonialism and the study of South Asian cultures, histories, and traditions. He also has a particular interest in Indian philosophical thought in the period between 200-900 CE and especially […]
ar·ti·facts with Prof. Ramey
Prof. Ramey kicked off our ar·ti·facts series in the Fall of 2012. Take a look at his video to see what artifact he shared with us… (And be sure to check it out next time to stop in to say hi!) ar·ti·facts: A Tale of Cooperation with Prof. Ramey from UA Religious Studies. […]
Backstory: Prof. Steven Ramey
“Backstory” is a series that asks the REL Faculty to tell us a little bit about themselves, to explore how they became interested in the academic study of religion and their own specialty, elaborating on their current work both within and outside the University. Where are you from? I grew up in Williamsburg, Kentucky, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains with less than 5000 people. The town has a small private college where my father taught, so I grew […]