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culture on the edge

Scriptures and Roots in Postscripts

Posted on September 14, 2018September 14, 2018 by Richard Newton

Over in Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, I have an article that has gone to press. It's called "Reading Alex Haley's Roots: Toward an Anthropology of Scriptures."

Posted in Culture, roots, Scholarship, UncategorizedTagged culture on the edge, identity, identity politics, idroots, kunta kinte, Religion, religious studies, roots, scriptures, theologyLeave a comment

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REL504 Religious Studies as History, Field, and Discipline end-of-term 🎉!

Nationalism will “see you at the car wash...” Similarly, in Alex Haley’s boyhood home, there is a Roots Car Wash. What can I say? Scriptures, it’s a living!

Soundgarden is getting a lot of play today. Don’t sleep on the B sides.

Aaron Sorkin has a line in The West Wing that I take as the challenge for my teaching: “An artist's job is to captivate you for however long as we've asked for your attention.” I think about this a lot in the classroom. So when students come to office hours or email me about what they’ve been thinking, I’m honored that they would take extra time to entertain what I’ve shared. This semester, some of my New Testament students wanted to discuss the Gospel of John outside of class time (FG gets the short end of the stick in my intro). So we did a mini-seminar. No extra credit was given, just students “...there to work” to paraphrase J. Z. Smith’s self-description when he visited as the @studyreligion Aronov Lecturer. Were I to tweak Sorkin’s line for pedagogy, I’d add that a teacher’s job is that they’ll learn to be captivated by the act of paying attention to the field in their vision. I learn so much by watching them develop this discipline. I hope I stay curious and continue to learn in the process.

Branching Out

Cold Takes: The Website of Writer Kelly J. Baker
Culture on the Edge
Practicum: Critical Theory, Religion, and Pedagogy
Religion Bulletin
Studying Religion in Culture
Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

Elizabethtown College Student Introduction to Islam Website

The William V. Puffenberger Digital Collection of Religious Artifacts @Elizabethtown College

CalPolyPomona’s Murals of East Los Angeles

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