December 21 2024

by Sarah Levine, American Academy of Religion

In the fall of 2010, I was a MA student beginning my second year of graduate school at Georgia State University. Molly Bassett was a new hire for our department, in her first year teaching in a tenure-track position. The previous semester I had taken a graduate seminar with her on material culture theory and method in religious studies, and it was there that I found her perspective and approach to teaching really engaging.1[1] She presented her ideological stance in that course, often reiterating that religious studies is more a field than a discipline, and that became even more in clear the course we discuss here, "Religious Dimensions in Human Experience." In our preliminary discussions about this series, Molly referred to her pedagogical approach to that class as an “ensemble approach.” That will bare itself out in my reflection on the iteration of the course I took in 2010 and in our discussion about the one she’s organized for this fall. It’s also, I think a meta-term for the way she methodologically approaches religious studies more generally.

"Religious Dimensions" had two primary lenses that Molly made clear in her syllabus. The first was that the class was anthropological in nature. “In this course,” she noted in the course introduction, “we will not assume the category of ‘religious experience,” but rather interrogate various dimensions of human experience that we might call ‘religious’.” While this may not satisfy all scholars skeptical of phenomenological approaches, it was more than adequate for reasons I’ll explain later. The second lens, a subcategory of the first, was that of narrative. Overall, one of the main takeaways of the class was an implicit request that we become more cognizant of the primacy of narrative—not just in “religions,” but in the ways we make sense of the worlds we encounter as scholars. The sheer variety of approaches, media, and sources in the syllabus—the ensemble approach—worked together to make this latter point clearer over time.

by Molly Bassett, Georgia State University

Late last spring, Sarah Levine, a former student now senior editor for Religious Studies News, emailed me to ask if I would be interested in writing for the newsletter’s new column “Theoretically Speaking.” Her e-mail came at a perfect time: I had just begun redesigning one of the courses Sarah took with me several years ago. In fact, she took the first version of the course, and it is now in its third iteration. Sarah and I met over coffee, and I proposed that she write with me. She graciously agreed. Our essays reflect on “Religious Dimensions in Human Experience,” a dual-level (graduate and undergraduate) course that uses a comparative method to explore “religion” and religions as anthropological projects.

Sarah took a version of the course inspired by an epigraph and op-ed.1 We examined themes like certitude (or ignorance, as Sarah puts it) using Errol Morris’s Times essays, and Oliver Sacks, Daniel Dennett, and Gloria Anzaldúa informed our conversations about storytelling and “the self.” This fall, the course will look completely different, but the underlying method, which I describe below, is the same. While reading widely for my research, I came across Wendy Doniger’s observation, “Animals and gods are two closely related communities poised like guardians on either threshold of our human community, two others by which we define ourselves” (1989, 3). My aim in “Religious Dimensions” is always to provide space and structures for students to ask some of the big questions that bring them to the study of religions. This fall, we will be examining humans as beings that stand “Between Animals and Gods.” In this essay and the one that follows it, Sarah and I explain a bit about the place and application of theory and method in the course, and Sarah her experience of the course.

by Brandy Daniels, Vanderbilt University

Still from Florence + the Machine's music video, "How Big How Blue How Beautiful." Florence Welch in white raising hands to sky.

I’ve been slow to listen to Florence + the Machine’s newest album, "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful," which is rather odd given that I’m a long-time fan, and thus have waited in patient, eager anticipating for over three years for new material from the fiery musician who so many, myself included, see as  "flamboyantly imaginative" and "captivating," whose “exceptional sense of melody” produces songs that “let her show off with grand, arching vocal lines, leaping deftly across her registers.” As I’ve often said about another of my favorite musicians, Karen Berquist of "Over the Rhine," Florence too sings like she’s having an orgasm. How could one not be captivated?

Yet, when I first heard “What Kind of Man?,” the first single from the new album, soon after it was released in February, I was disappointed. It’s blues-pop vibe just didn’t jive with me—or, rather, it just hit the wrong note, evoking more of a feeling of post-coital ambivalence and regret then of orgasmic release. I’d recently been through a tough breakup of my own, and wanted the melancholic, abstracting Florence of “What the Water Gave Me” and “Breaking Down” or, even better, the melodic Florence of “Dog Days are Over” and “Shake it Out:” the Florence of upbeat, empowering hopefulness. I was looking for the blues without the pop, or even the pop after the blues. But not both together.

by Beth Eddy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Well, the time is almost upon me. My tenure materials are due in early June. The last cancer scare was over the Christmas holidays. My doctors tell me "reduce your stress load." They don't understand my situation.

I was diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer in September of 2010. I had a complete mastectomy with the removal of seventeen lymph nodes early that October. Five of those nodes turned out to be cancerous. I was given a diagnosis of Stage III breast cancer. What followed were eight weeks of chemotherapy, then a month and a half of radiation therapy. After a year of recovery, I had a free tram flap replacement of my breast, which involved cutting a segment from my belly fat and muscle and hooking it up to the blood vessels that will keep it alive as my new breast. The second surgery was by far the harder of the two.

SherAli Tareen with Kristian Petersen

SherAli Tareen, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, was awarded an American Academy of Religion’s 2014 Individual Research Grant. He talks to Religious Studies News about his project Islam, Tradition, and Democracy: The Case of the Deoband Madrasa.

Image: Darul Uloom Deoband Madrasa, located in Uttar Pradesh in the northeast India. Photo by Bakrbinaziz via Wikimedia Commons.

by Gail Labovitz, American Jewish University

Opening title screen of the film (2001) The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

The “Seligman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Judaic Studies” is very generous as academic fellowships go. It supplies full living expenses, including use of a large (multi-bedroom!) apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It includes health insurance and (very rare in a postdoc) a retirement plan. This coming week it even includes tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert, and I don’t know of any other postdoc that offers that. Moreover, the “Seligman Fellowship” will give me an opportunity to do the researching, writing, and publishing that will make me a more attractive candidate for academic jobs—most particularly, to do the necessary rewriting to make my dissertation publishable—without any teaching obligations. Finally, the “Seligman Fellowship” is highly exclusive. It’s never been offered before, and very likely will not be offered again. It’s only ever been offered to one candidate—me.

As you may have guessed, I’m married to Seligman.

We invite AAR members to make public comments on this draft policy statement on academic freedom.

Interview with Aysha Hidayatullah and Kecia Ali, Cochairs, Islam, Gender, and Women Group

Five women sitting on stairs outside a building in Sarajevo chatting. Four are veiled, and one is reading a book.

Each year, the AAR's program committee reviews applications for new program units to be added to the Annual Meeting. Proposed program units must demonstrate how they will contribute to the field and are judged on a number of factors: whether they represent an emerging area of study, if there's a significant scholarly demand, and how they will contribute to the Annual Meeting program.

Among the newest program units to be inducted into the Annual Meeting program is the Islam, Gender, and Women Group. In this interview, cochairs Kecia Ali and Aysha Hidayatullah explain to RSN the Group's commitment to nontraditional programming, its relationship with feminism, and the rhetoric of objectivity.

 

DRAFT 10
7 July 2015

The two-fold purpose of this statement is to generate conversation about the challenges of research about religion and to provide guidelines that establish standards of professional conduct and identify researchers’ responsibilities.

General Reflections

by Alison Colpits, University of Toronto

Hands in Solidarity, Hands of Freedom mural on the side of the United Electrical Workers trade union building on West Monroe Street at Ashland Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.

I always find it unfortunate when the so-called work-life balance is framed as a problem for women. I’m aware that, as the AAR Status of Women in the Profession Committee (SWP) rightly indicates, it’s a problem for women insofar as women are still mostly responsible for “care work.” So I don’t find it unfortunate because I don’t think it to be true. I do think it’s true. Rather, I find it unfortunate because even though the work-life balance is an urgent problem for women, having women write and talk about it for each other isn’t going to change anything. The problem with the SWP calling for stories about the work-life balance in academia is that it’s the SWP that has to make the call for it.

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