Ellie Cochran is a senior at UA, majoring in Religious Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies with a depth study in Environmental Management. She will be graduating this May and plans to pursue a Master of Science in Family Financial Planning & Counseling. Over the last few months, in the final semester of my undergraduate degree, I […]
continue readingVoyant Tools on the REL Blog: Isn’t this Ex-Site-ing?
Voyant Tools allows you to read web pages. Voyant helps you do analysis of sites, too. The kind of reading done by Voyant might be called “scraping,” which covers activities such as text analysis, statistical analysis and data mining. In order words, Voyant may help you pull things out from a site more quickly than […]
continue readingWhose Evangelicalism is in Ruins?
The American Academy of Religion, the national scholarly association for religious studies in America, just sent out its program of plenary addresses for its upcoming annual meeting this November. The abstract for David Gushee’s Presidential Address caught my eye. There are a number of things to say about this. First of all, I told ya’ll […]
continue readingThe Problem of First Person Authority
If you’ve paid attention to the news in the US over the past week or so, you’ll know that a bomber was loose in Austin, Texas, and that the suspect was cornered by authorities the other day and blew himself up.
continue readingOn the Problem With Reproducing Ourselves
It’s long past when faculty in doctoral degree-granting schools in our field need to start reconsidering what it is that we’re doing in graduate education. I’m hardly the first to say that, I know.
continue readingThe REL Journal Group: Health or Perceived Health Benefits
The following exchange between Prof. Russell McCutcheon and Sierra Lawson, a graduate student in our MA program, reflects on the recent meeting of REL’s monthly journal reading group, part of our Religion in Culture MA. Russell: Sierra, in your undergrad here at UA you did a double major in Anthropology and Religious Studies, and I […]
continue readingProblems in the Big Tent
On social media yesterday a variety of people posted a link to a recent First Things blog post by a theology professor at Nortre Dame who made the argument that religions other than Christianity do not have theologies. For although “[n]on-Christian piety is real and profound,” or so she claims, she defines the term theology […]
continue readingComponents of What?
One of our grad students has pointed out a problem with a recent article that we read in our Department’s monthly journal group; Sarah wrote: Although titled “Durkheim with Data,” it seemed as though the creators of this project have not critically considered or defined the very categories they have opted to work within… I […]
continue readingThe REL Journal Group: Durkheim and Data Edition
The following exchange between Prof. Mike Altman and Sarah Griswold, a student in our MA program, reflects on the recent meeting of the journal reading group, part of our Religion in Culture MA. Mike Altman: Sarah, for our first journal reading group you chose the article “Durkheim with Data: The Databse of Religious History” from a […]
continue readingGrist for the Millstone
I recall a conference, quite some years ago, where, as part of a panel discussion, I was once called “a vulgar Smithian”; it was a criticism that responded to my interest in the category “religion” itself, thus linking me to Jonathan Z.’s often-cited (and, these days, often-criticized) claim from the opening to his 1982 essay […]
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