Did you happen to catch this story about too many “love locks” on Paris’s famous Pont des Arts bridge, which carries foot traffic over the Seine river? A portion of it collapsed under the weight of the locks.
continue readingThe Myth of Universal Standard
By Joshua Blackwell Joshua Blackwell is a junior Biology major from Alabaster, Alabama. Despite his scientific focus, Joshua is also passionate about music, philosophy, and theology. Upon graduating, Joshua hopes to attend medical school. Over the past many years, we as Americans have become consumed by our culture. Rarely acknowledging the existence of an outside […]
continue reading“I’ve Seen Things…”
This semester I taught our senior seminar, required of all majors and minors before they graduate from the department. It was on the topic of tradition. Well, not really. It was on the topic of the discourse on tradition. That’s a difference that matters, I think.
continue readingThe Nature of Truth, Categorization, and Other Blurry Matters
By Brooke Champagne Brooke Champagne is an instructor of English and the Assistant Director of First-Year Writing at The University of Alabama. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction from Louisiana State University. While she makes her living as a teacher, she is a perennial student of writing, religion, and language, […]
continue readingNo One Has a Monopoly on Teaching Critical Thinking
Yesterday my colleague Steven Ramey posted about a recent study of those who took the 2013 Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) — their undergraduate GPA, their undergraduate major, and their LSAT score. The means for each major were then graphed (above), with undergrad GPA on the vertical axis and LSAT score on the horizontal, making […]
continue readingApproaching the Bible
By Max Hartley Max Hartley is a senior studying Anthropology and Asian Studies, with a focus on East Asia. She is particularly fascinated by mythology, religion, and the influence of folk religions in the modern age, as well as shamanism in its many forms, particularly as it is practiced in Korea. This article from the Huffington […]
continue readingThe 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 […]
continue reading“It Doesn’t Matter What I Say”
On p. 3, near the opening of the late Frits Staal’s classic essay, “The Meaningless of Ritual” (Numen [1979] 26: 2-22), he wrote: Contrary to how most of us see it, for Staal, ritual was not referential, i.e., it’s not that one does this because it means this or represents that. While the meaning surely […]
continue readingCompeting Representations
T. Nicole Goulet is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Manitoba and Brandon University. Having completed her Ph.D. at the University of Manitoba on textual representations of Sarada Devi, Dr. Goulet continues her research on the intersection of colonial politics and religious practice in India, with special reference to gender. After an online conversation […]
continue readingMaking Cents
Every now and then you hear about a really large, anonymous tip that’s been left for a server — here’s a story (including video) from the other day on this very topic, from nearby Knoxville, TN. Of course, it’s hard for a scholar of religion not to hear things we commonly call religious scattered all […]
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