Researchers are looking to make a robotic re-incarnation of Danish Founding Father N.F.S. Grundtvig, but what do such AI interfaces say about how religious studies can participate in digital humanities research?
Bishop Brathwaite’s story points out to us the degree to which the ghostly histories of enslaved and colonized peoples continue to haunt the present from the graves of colonial infrastructures and through repurposed modes of colonial regulation. We can include in this the category of religion and its promised freedom as sites for such hauntings as well
As I listened to her interview about the book and its ramifications on the Religious Studies Project, I not only appreciated her balanced and thorough approach to this topic, but found myself wanting to focus on three points that she touched on in the talk: 1) the ways in which “religion” is defined in the public sphere; 2) whether or not we should listen to “fringe” Islamophobes and their rhetoric on religion; and 3) thinking about “when Christianity is not a religion.”
[I]t is notable how infrequently religion appears as a major theme in the personal lives of famous science fiction authors and how many, including those for whom religion is a major theme in their work, are themselves either atheists or practitioners of idiosyncratic or unorganized alternative spiritualities…
In this response Mandy McMichael highlights the advantages of interpretative frame used by Chelsea Belanger in her interview on Christian beauty Pageants. “Noting the tendency of the few scholars who do study pageants to default to the Miss America Pageant,” McMichael explains, “Belanger asks listeners to consider the diversity of pageant systems in America as a subject in need of study. She thus steps outside the Miss America spotlight and into its far-reaching shadow to consider how religion functions in other pageant systems in the United States.”
There’s always another thing to see as data for religious studies, but widening the boundary for what counts as data comes with a price. Every new category is a multiplication. When your choices are infinite, then explaining your choices becomes an obligation.
Most of the health psychology of religion sub-sub-field suffers less from a God-shaped hole and more of a God-shaped elephant sitting in the room that usually goes undiscussed. The most important, but always implicit, mechanism in these studies is God.
By Christopher R. Cotter, in response to an interview with Chris Silver on “Atheism, New Religious Movements, and Cultural Tension”. Listening to Chris Silver’s recent podcast on Atheism, New Religious Movements, and Cultural Tension was a thoroughly pleasant experience. I enjoyed hearing a colleague who I first met in 2011, and who quickly came on board the nascent RSP team (as interviewer, editor, writer, and more), taking his well-earned place on the ‘other’ side of the microphone. Like
A response to “Modest Dress Beyond the Headscarf” by Saskia Warren, PhD I listened with great interest to Elizabeth Bucar’s podcast interview with Candace Mixon. In particular, I was animated by her discussion of how fashion offers an alternative to textual analysis of religion by privileging the visual, material cultures, and everyday practices. In this I was firmly in agreement as a cultural geographer who also writes on Muslim women and fashion cultures, albeit the
A Response to “LDS Garments and Agency” HEADER by Laura Morlock, PhD HEADER The dressed body mediates between the inner self and the surrounding world. It establishes our identities in social spaces where these can be uncertain and acts as a symbol through which we are read and can read others (however ambiguous these readings may be). Dress may be commonplace, but it is far from vacuous or insignificant. It acts as the visible embodiment
The barrier of the Temple Garment both shapes and impedes the outward creation of the identity of the Mormon woman.
Many Canadians see themselves as a nation that champions human rights and diversity, alongside and entwined with ideals of secularism and religious neutrality. This often leads to disputes around what constitutes “diversity.”
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