Prof. Newton shares how a little bit about his approach to helping students consider historiography. His memo assignment reminds students that they have a substantial role in writing the history they are studying. It’s a simple assignment that is useful for the novice and professional historian alike.
continue reading“Violence is Never the Answer”
If you were watching CNN midday today then you might have heard LZ Granderson‘s interview, commenting on several days of nation-wide protests in the US that have resulted from yet another African American man dying at the hands of the police — this time a man named George Floyd, in Minneapolis. What Granderson said caught […]
continue readingMining Futures for the Philosophy of Religion: What to Do with 80,000 or so Journal Articles
By Nathan Loewen and Jackson Foster We have some questions. Given its conventional focus on topics and problems specific to Western Christianity, how might the philosophy of religion enter the 21st century, globalized world? How may researchers build bridges from those conventional approaches towards other topics and problems? Steven Dawson’s essay reviews some conventional approaches […]
continue readingHow Not to Reinvent Yourself
Sierra Lawson is a BA and MA graduate of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama who is now pursuing her Ph.D. in the study of religion at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In this post she reflects on how, as a TA, she’s using a model of the field […]
continue readingUsing PH and PRS to Understand Religion and the Civil Rights Movement
I have always been fascinated with the relationship religion had with the civil rights movement. Some significant leaders of the movement were apart of religious groups as pastors. I want to understand why this occurred so frequently within the civil rights movement. But, I also want to pull back the metaphoric curtain and look at […]
continue readingReading, Writing and… R: How I Began to Study the Philosophy of Religion with Digital Tools
Prof. Nathan Loewen specializes in the philosophy of religion and digital humanities among other things. This summer his research interests are taking him in a new direction at their intersection. In Fall 2018, I took my research in a new direction. I began learning how to study the philosophy of religion with digital tools. The objective […]
continue readingApples and Oranges, Similar yet Different
AnnaLaura Campbell is a Junior from Bailey, MS, majoring in Accounting and minoring in Religious Studies. After graduation, she plans to attend law school and study business law or continue her education in Accounting with a master’s degree and CPA license. We’ve heard the phrase many times in our lives: “That’s like comparing apples and […]
continue readingA Return to the Nacirema
Ryland Hunstad, a student in Prof. Simmons’s REL 100 this past semester, is a sophomore from Denver, Colorado majoring in finance & management information systems, with interests in politics, philosophy, & religion. In the following post he offers some further reflections on a group of people who were originally studied, in the mid-1950s, by the […]
continue readingIn or Out?
I’ve got to admit, I’m getting tired of all the “epistemological crisis” talk and the way it’s being pinned on the humanities in general and postmodernism in particular. For the way I see it, members of groups that once benefited from a broad social consensus are now a bit angry that someone has pointed out […]
continue readingI, Robot… I, Ethical
On my morning drive into work, I heard a news report on autonomous and intelligent road vehicles, or self-driving automobiles. The story explained that as these vehicles are optimized for road safety, designers must determine programming imperatives such as whether a vehicle should prioritize the safety of the human “driver” or a pedestrian in a […]
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