The Culture of Award Talk

Photo of President's Hall

One of the things I love about the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is our culture of student research. I have the pleasure of advising Sierra Ruden in our Religion in Culture MA program. Sierra has been using discourse analysis to examine the social function of award shows. Sierra's been experimenting … Continue reading The Culture of Award Talk

All Quiet on The Small Internet

"Quiet Please" is written on Brick

And somewhere in-between I had the realization that, contrary to popular belief, the internet isn't just about generating original content that demonstrates influence or raises one's clout. The web need not be worldwide; and our time in it, world dominating. I'm here for the small internet, where a niche of people find what they're looking for--whether they were looking for it or not. And for me this has involved what Kelly J. Baker has called "the cold take," and C. Travis Webb describes as "intellectual intimacy."

A Slice of Social Theory

The other night, I got to thinking about how Domino's Pizza reinvented itself in the last decade. Rather than ordering a late night pie, I wrote a blog post about it over at The University of Alabama's Study Religion blog. A scholar of religion might redescribe the company’s reception to negative feedback as a form … Continue reading A Slice of Social Theory