As a scholar in religious studies, my interest was piqued when a recent “The Daily” episode from the New York Times discussed community formation in Birds Aren’t Real, a movement / conspiracy theory that claims the government has replaced birds with drones to conduct widespread surveillance. The analysis of people who connect with others […]
continue readingOur Pre- & Inter- Pandemic Teaching was Never “Normal” (p.s. nor our post-pandemic teaching, too!)
Two Perspectives I wish to talk about specific methods I and my colleagues adopted for pre-, inter and post-pandemic teaching.* I come at this with two perspectives: Teaching – As a freshly-tenured professor of religious studies at a public, R1 university (University of Alabama). My current research coordinates and publishes research with the Global-Critical Philosophy […]
continue readingYour Sun Bread, Yourself
Every year my kids and I make Sun Bread to commemorate the winter solstice. I got this idea from the place where modern momming dwells: Instagram. My kids (by chance) went to a Waldorf preschool which focuses, among other things, on reinforcing the children’s identification with nature and spending the majority of time outside regardless […]
continue reading“Working Yourself into a Shoot”: When is a Performance a Performance?
As some of you may know, I love pro wrestling and I think it can be good data for the scholar of religion. Let me offer a recent example that lit up the wrestling fan twitters over the weekend. The WWE, the world’s biggest wrestling company, toured through Canada over the weekend, holding a show in […]
continue readingPower and Perfect Pictures
This post is part of a series that originated out of a photo essay assignment in Dr. Simmons’s Interim “Religion and Pop Culture” course that asked students to apply discussion themes to everyday objects or experiences. When I was younger and more naive, I thought the future would have flying cars, cured diseases, and immortal […]
continue readingPower Always Changes
This post is part of a series that originated out of a photo essay assignment in Dr.Simmons’s Interim “Religion and Pop Culture” course that asked students to apply discussion themes to everyday objects or experiences. As I was sitting at work the other day at Bryant Denny Stadium, the doorbell buzzed turning on the camera […]
continue readingTaco Insights on Faculty Service
With the start of another school year right around the corner I’m thinking about service — one of those three main areas into which scholars usually divide up their work (the others being research and teaching, of course — and the order in which they’re written is not insignificant). It’s not hard to find faculty […]
continue readingExplaining Nags, Witches, and Evil Stepmothers
Did you hear the radio story this morning on folklorists attempting to explain why, all across culture, old women so often appear as evil characters in fairy tales and myths…?
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