A few weeks ago, after emailing a representative of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), it became apparent to me that the Fall conference-going season in our field will be moving forward as the usual in-person meetings instead of the hybrid format that, in the light of a year living with COVID-19, I had assumed […]
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 readingGrad Tales is Back!
Interviewed by Kim Davis (BA 2003), Jennifer Alfano Nelson (BA 2007) was the Department’s guest at the first Grad Tales of the new year, held in the Ferguson Student Union last night. Now hosted by the Department’s recently-formed Alumni Liaison Committee (of which both Jennifer and Kim are members), Grad Tales is an ongoing series […]
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 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 reading“What Do I Talk About At the Job Interview?”
I’ve written a number of blog posts over the years about the skills that students in the academic study of religion acquire. It’s worth thinking about because too many people seem focused only on the content of an undergrad degree, assuming that the thing that you study is the thing that you’ll do. It’s an […]
continue readingAim High…?
I was at one of the field’s doctoral schools a while back, to give a talk, and heard from a couple sources — both grad students repeating what they’d been told as well as from a faculty member — that the primary purpose for students to be enrolled in graduate school (or perhaps at that […]
continue readingHistoric Artifact? An Open Letter to Department Search Committees from 1997
The following (co-written with my then co-editor at the now defunct Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, the late Tim Murphy), first appeared as an open letter in our inaugural issue (26/1 [1997]) and was then reproduced as the appendix to chapter 6 of The Discipline of Religion (2003). Though […]
continue readingCome One, Come All?
Occasionally I see a job ad, in our field, that has an open rank, stating that people at different career stages/ranks are invited to apply, or an ad so general that I’m not sure what the search committee is wanting. These ads strike me as rather problematic, for a few reasons.
continue readingA Response to “Responsible Research Practices,” Part 11: Research Assistants
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. The second to the last item on the draft document is the only one that concerns our work […]
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