Bar none, Ken Burns (b. 1953) is decidedly America’s most important documentary filmmaker, notable as well for his multi-episode contributions exploring facets of this nation’s history and story His latest contribution—The U.S. and the Holocaust [2022; 3]—is no exception, and, as he himself has acknowledged in more than one interview, builds upon his 2014 The […]
continue reading“The Cult of Cults”: Pop Culture Representations of a Minority Religious Group
Allison Isidore is a second-year M.A. student in the Department of Religious Studies. On December 8, I submitted my last paper for the semester, wrapping up what has been, for many, a stressful period. Having just seen the trailer for the new HBOMAX docuseries “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults,” I wondered how the religious […]
continue readingYou’re a Historian; Get the Memo?
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 readingThe CV: This is Your Life
Since Prof. McCutcheon has offered a couple of posts with advice about the job market, one on campus interviews and one on the process more broadly, I thought I would add a post about another piece of the job market process: the CV. The topic of the CV came up the other day in our […]
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 readingAn Experimental Case Study
There’s a timely project — happening now, right before our eyes — that someone in the study of religion could (should?) tackle, concerning the strategic use of origins tales in the present — not just that, but the self-beneficial way in which groups choose to use and sanction them (or simply ignore them).
continue reading“Yes, but…”
If you’re paying attention to US news then you may have been seeing the recent stories leading up to the Senate vote that failed to pass the necessary financial deals to finance the federal government — which resulted in the shutdown that we’re now in. While some parts of the federal government are still open, […]
continue reading“We Could Only Resort to Prayer…”
There was an interesting story on the radio the other day — in which a Roman Catholic bishop in the Philippines described how they’re now ringing church bells every evening to raise awareness about the brutality of the ongoing drug war in his country. Give it a listen (go here if the embed doesn’t work): […]
continue readingFor Members Only
I recall, in the Fall of 2015, a job ad appearing on our main professional online site for a pastor for a church. Then, not long after, I saw an ad there for someone to co-write a “15-20 page paper … on the theology and praxis of the engineering profession for it’s Christian members.” Both […]
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