An undergraduate student uses social theory to consider why Americans appear more invested in decrying school shootings than ending them.
The Parkland Survivors – Breaking a Habitus?

An undergraduate student uses social theory to consider why Americans appear more invested in decrying school shootings than ending them.
Today, we can speak casually of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Many of us are not required to think about, really think about, the effects of three hundred-plus years of “writing on backs” that lead to the movement. We are removed from the economic realities and social injustices that lit the fire for that movement. Anyone who has not had to come to terms with the persistence of that writing on the backs is not likely to feel the sense of urgency that racism in this country ought to stir in all of us.
In just a few short weeks, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) will be holding their joint annual meeting. Recently, the AAR took up the tradition of bandying a theme; "Revolutionary Love." Elsewhere I've offered remarks on the issues it raises for the type of work that I … Continue reading The Bible and Race in the USA: Dreaming of Ahistories
In 2014 I began teaching an Elizabethtown College course called "The Bible and Race in the USA." It's a seminar driven by a question about how discourses like "Bible," "race" and "America" inform each other to the extent that we can hardly unweave them. There's a craftiness to textuality that we quickly forget all that … Continue reading The Bible and Race in the USA: An Introduction to Contexts
What is it that we are are hoping students gain from our classes? What do we want them to experience? What excites us about what they'll bring to the table? What scares us about it? What are we too quick or too afraid to name in our courses of study?