At Sowing the Seed, we presume that the mark of good scholarship is the provocation of thought, reflection, and exchange in community. We can all be better students, and we’re committed to providing multimedia resources to help anyone up to the challenge.

Higher education seems bent on cataloguing learning in terms of assessment, rankings, and credentialing. Here at Sowing the Seed, we are inspired by the stories behind our contributors’ work. This challenges us to be study better, listen better, and create better. Their growth is our growth.

Find out what Sowing the Seed has meant to some of our student and scholar contributors.

Learn about the experiences of some of our featured student contributors.

Garrett Clark

Guest Contributor. Political Science and Religious Studies double major, Peace and Conflict Studies minor, Elizabethtown College ’16.

Boko Haram assaults the senses of vision, hearing, feeling, and intellect to promote their message throughout Africa and the world. The Boko Haram flag is, to some, arousing “the viewer’s emotions and potentially creat[ing] empathy by showing human sacrifice endured for the sake of others and for a noble cause.”[15] Those suffering and dying with the reality of Salafi Jihadism are part of the consequences of Boko Harm’s aesthetics.

From “Boko Haram and the Aesthetics of Violence“

Sam Epps

Guest Contributor. Business Administration – Interfaith leadership Studies double major. Elizabethtown College ’19.

Many of the children have experienced the violence of Boko Haram or lost family members to violence, which has left them psychologically scarred. When asked what they want to become in the future, many children respond with one word: Soldier. Rene Girard talks of desire and mimetic violence of which the response of the children is an example. They’ve had their childhoods and family taken away from them, and they want vengeance in return.

From “A Passionate Education?: The Creation of Boko Haram“

Hannah Ciocco

Guest Contributor. History major, Art History –Religious Studies.Elizabethtown College ’19.

To increase the number of supporters, the Black Lives Matter campaign has been trying to receive support from Americans, especially, as of late, Christians. The Black Lives Matter campaign wants the support of Christians because religion can positively influence the social, cultural, and political aspects of their campaign. Therefore, the campaign could benefit from the support of the church because they could use it as a platform to recruit new supporters of this important social activism.

From “Christian Support for the Black Lives Matter Campaign“

Brady Morgan

Guest Contributor. Biology: Pre-Medicine major, Elizabethtown College ’19.

Steve Jobs knew that to influence as many people as he wished and to truly make progress with his goal, he needed to appeal to more than facts. In a conversation with his marketing director Jobs said, “We don’t stand a chance of advertising with features and benefits and with RAMs and with charts and comparisons, the only chance we have of communicating is with a feeling… Yeah, we say it’s a cult, and then we say, hey, drink the Kool-Aid.”[7]

From “A Byte of Apple: Identifying Religion as a Social Technology“