Allison Isidore is a second-year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies. Have you seen the new HBO show “Lovecraft Country”? In the series premiere, set in 1950s America, we follow Atticus Freeman (played by Jonathan Majors), Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance) as they travel to “Ardham,” Massachusetts, […]
continue reading“A confidential informant is not a spy…”
The title of this post is a quotation from US Senator Lindsey Graham, during a recent radio interview — find more details here, in a recent Washington Post report, along with a transcript of that portion of his interview. It concerns the President characterizing someone who is now much in the news as being a […]
continue readingThe Blame Game: Myth and Reality in Repo Man
Kat Reed is a Sophomore studying Secondary Mathematics Education and Religious Studies. The following blog post was written for REL 360: Popular Culture/Humanities.
continue readingUnderstanding Our Present Moment
My colleague tweeted the following the other day: If only there was an academic discipline that studied myth, history, and meaning-making that could say something about these monuments. — Michael J. Altman (@MichaelJAltman) August 17, 2017 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js It was a bit tongue-in-cheek to be sure, but it made a good point, I think, as he […]
continue readingWords and Things: Modern Concepts, Ancient Interests
Matt Sheedy (Ph.D) lectures in the department of religious studies at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and is associate editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. His research interests include critical social theory, theories of secularism, atheism and science v. religion in the public realm, as well as representations of Christianity, Islam, and Native […]
continue readingThe Hegemony of Normalcy and the Academic Study of Religion
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 […]
continue reading“Are You From Horry County, M’am…?”
Looking for a dissertation topic? Then here’s a 7 minute video you could write a book on, easily. Maybe two.
continue reading“I belong to no religion. My religion is love”: Sufism, Religious Studies, and Love
By now you’ve probably heard about the theme for next year’s American Academy of Religion (AAR) annual meeting, revolutionary love, and the controversy surrounding it. Some of my colleagues, Russell McCutcheon and Merinda Simmons, have written about it, and the Bulletin for the Study of Religion is posting a series of responses. Revolutionary love, or […]
continue reading“Who said names were supposed to be easy to say? What are you, a candy bar?”
Students in REL 237 are watching Avalon this week, a 1990 film about the changes that take place within a family of early to mid-20th century Americans who, like so many of our ancestors, came to this continent from somewhere else. “I came to America in 1914…, by way of Philadelphia. That’s where I got […]
continue readingA Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 6: Irrevocable Commitments
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. This is, at least to me, perhaps the most troubling of all the bullet points in the document, […]
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