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…?
continue readingBarbarians at the Gates
Look up! Waayyyyyy up! It’s election time in Canada and Canadians are talking about values. And it’s not because of battle flags flying over places of government or off the backs of pickups trucks. No, it is about “barbaric cultural practices.” The crux of the matter, like so many things, plays on the oh-so-blurry situation […]
continue readingCreate Your Own Identity
On Oct. 23, a “hatchet-wielding” man attacked and wounded several police officers in New York City (Queens). Naturally, media outlets immediately started speculating about what could have prompted this man to carry out such a horrific attack. According to several accounts, the man was a recent convert to Islam who had “self-radicalized.” The New York […]
continue readingWhat Makes A Terrorist?
Katie Fortin, a native of northern Vermont, is in her senior year of undergrad at the University of Alabama. She is currently working towards a degree in English with a minor in Religious Studies. When you hear the word “terrorist” what do you think? You probably imagine a dark skinned Middle Eastern man. But why […]
continue reading“I Smell the Vapors of Hell on You…”
There’s a new joint British-US TV series airing over here, “Outlander,” in which a WWII English nurse finds herself mysteriously taken backward in time, from the mid-1940s to the fiercely independent Scottish highlands two hundred years earlier. (That the independence vote takes place today in Scotland makes this series airing now kind of curious.) From […]
continue readingNo Chili Peppers
There’s a bit of a controversy brewing in social media over a new review essay published in the our field’s main peer review periodical, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, on the book, On Teaching Religion, edited by Chris Lehrich and containing some of the writings on pedagogy by Jonathan Z. Smith. The reviewer, […]
continue readingThe Myth of Universal Standard
By Joshua Blackwell Joshua Blackwell is a junior Biology major from Alabaster, Alabama. Despite his scientific focus, Joshua is also passionate about music, philosophy, and theology. Upon graduating, Joshua hopes to attend medical school. Over the past many years, we as Americans have become consumed by our culture. Rarely acknowledging the existence of an outside […]
continue readingReligion on the Television (Part 3)
Kate Burton also plays attorney Victoria Adler on the series The Good Wife, and to that show I would now like to turn. The Good Wife‘s central character is Alicia Florrirck (Julianna Margulies), a woman estranged from her politician husband, Peter Florrick (Chris North), whose misdeeds force him to be removed from public office as Cook […]
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