A folk healer like Agnis trod a fine line between being someone people called upon when they needed help and someone they blamed when misfortune struck (21:30) So says Lucy Worsley, the joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and also the host of a variety of recent TV shows on British […]
continue readingDoing Theory
Often in the study of religion you’ll hear people saying things like “I don’t do theory” (yes, there’s often an emphasis on the verb, akin to saying “I don’t do [insert something with which you disagree or dislike]) or maybe you’ll come across a conversation on when to introduce theory to undergraduate students — right […]
continue readingÉpater les Bourgeoise…?
I do no speak or read French. Many years ago, however, in undergraduate school, I had a professor of English literature who was inordinately fond of the French phrase épater les bourgeoise—as he would translate it on a regular basis, “to shock the ordinary human being out of his [or her] lethargy.” That is, there […]
continue readingResearch Suggestions, #48: To Cover or Not to Cover?
Have you been following the new U.S. President’s first overseas trip–including stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Italy…? Many news sources have commented on the fact that (as evidenced in the above photo), while in Saudi Arabia, Melania Trump, the First Lady, and her step-daughter, Ivanka, did not cover their heads (as is customary for […]
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…?
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 readingOut in the Open: Everybody’s Nobody
Sarah Griswold is a junior double majoring in Mathematics and Religious Studies. She spends her “free time” analyzing her favorite shows on Netflix, which of course winds up ruining them. She is currently enrolled in an independent study with Dr. Simmons where she is analyzing the popular HBO series “True Detective.” “[People] are things that […]
continue readingThe Dialectics of Identification
Yes, our Department is housed on the second floor of Manly Hall. It’s named after the second president of the University of Alabama, Basil Manly Sr (who held the office between 1837 and 1855). In fact, the president’s office was once in this building, on the ground floor (before the Greek Revival-styled President’s Mansion was […]
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 readingHannah Goes to India, Part 2
By Hannah Etchison Hannah Etchison, a graduating senior majoring in Religious Studies with a minor in Asian Studies, is spending six weeks of this fall in India, staying primarily at a monastery where she will learn from the women and help them with their English. This is her second post about that experience. See her […]
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