The first day of class can be a bit nerve-racking, even for profs. One might think that profs have it easy at the start of the semester, but we all know the importance of first impressions. And for myself, there can be a lot of anxiety around those initial activities. How much of the syllabus should we read? I don’t want to bore anyone, but I don’t want students starting out lost. Do we dive right into content? The semester […]
Tag: World Religions
Two Roads Diverged…
I’m on a panel, at a national conference this November, assessing the contributions of the late Huston Smith, so I’m re-reading some things that I’ve not read in a long time — such as his 1958 book, The Religions of Man (which, in one or another edition, has been in print ever since it was first published). […]
The Limits of the Field
Only recently did it come to my attention that one of the journals in our field now seems to understand itself in a curiously narrow way. […]
The “Tyranny of Theory” is to Blame
The other day I came across this video, from a publisher advertising a recent textbook on world religions. […]
“An Intense Experience”
Readers in the US may have already seen the commercials for Reza Aslan‘s upcoming series, Believer. It starts Sunday March 5 on CNN at 10 pm (eastern time). […]
Why & How We Do What We Do
I saw on social media yesterday that Huston Smith is reported to have passed away. He was 97. Apart from an update on Wikipedia there’s not much news on this on social media yet. […]
Another Good Book with Prof. Michael Altman
The tenth installment in our A Good Book series is now on vimeo! This episode revisits Prof. Michael Altman as he shares yet another influential book, The Invention of World Religions by Tomoko Masuzawa. Be sure to give it a watch! Another Good Book with Prof. Altman from UA Religious Studies. […]
What It Gives With One Hand….
I found this over at the Huffington Post this morning — an announcement for a new HarvardX (part of edX) course on religious literacy. The course is described as follows: […]
A “Hipster’s” Introduction to the Study of Religion
I’m writing this post during the office hours of my first REL100 course, “Introduction to the Study of Religion.” During the term, my 150 students were introduced to something they clearly did not expect: the study of religion. What did they expect? Something about this… […]
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A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 4: Research on Human Subjects
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. The previous post ended by citing the fourth of Bruce Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” — specifically, his call for scholars always to contextual, historicize, what they study by asking “who speaks here?” and “to what audience?” Among my difficulties with the AAR’s draft […]
Read More from A Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 4: Research on Human Subjects