Critical Religion and the Critical Study of Religion: A Response to Galen Watts and Sharday Mosurinjohn, Part 2

By Matt Sheedy

This is part-two of a two-part response to Watts and Mosurinjohn’s essay “Can Critical Religion Play by Its Own Rules? Why There Must Be More Ways to Be ‘Critical’ in the Study of Religion,which recently appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. See part 1 here

Critique #3. The claim that ‘CR’ scholars set up a false dichotomy by upholding their own position as etic (i.e. as objective outsiders), while deeming  others as emic (i.e. as subjective insiders) is based on a misinterpretation. Continuing with the example of colonialism that I outlined in Critique #2, Watts and Mosurinjohn claim, with reference to the work of McCutcheon: Continue reading “Critical Religion and the Critical Study of Religion: A Response to Galen Watts and Sharday Mosurinjohn, Part 2”

The Edge is off to Boston!

An image of red buttons that say

This Thursday, some members of Culture on the Edge will be heading to Boston, MA for the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature. If you’re there, be sure to look us up in the program book or on the mobile app and find us at a panel.

An image of equinox written in blue letters

While you’re there, be sure to stop by Equinox‘s table at the book display to find the group books such as Fabricating Origins, Fabricating Difference, and Fabricating Identities to see what all the Edge has been up to.

And rumor has it there might still be a few On the Edge buttons floating around, so keep an eye out coz they go quick!

The Edge Makes a Class Visit!

Richard Newton's tweet about REL 170The Edge’s Monica MIller (pictured right) visited Prof. Richard Newton‘s REL 170 Signifying Religion: An African American Worldivew course at Elizabethtown College this morning via skype. After seeing her blog post “What Gang Do You Claim?“, Prof. Newton invited Miller to skype with his class to analyze the category of “religion” and theorize about the idea of African American religion(s) and identity formation using her blog post as a primary example.

As we’ve seen on Twitter, the class visit was a huge success! A big thanks to Prof. Newton for bringing the Edge to class!

Dr. Monica R.Miller tweet about skyping with a class

For more information about Class Visits with Culture on the Edge, click here.

 

 

How and Why Should You Bring Culture on The Edge in the Classroom

an empty class room with

Pierre Bourdieu, in his 1998 book On Television, wrote: “There is nothing more difficult to convey than reality in all its ordinariness…Sociologists run into this problem all the time: How to make the ordinary extraordinary and evoke ordinariness in such a way that people will see just how extra-ordinary it is?” (21) This is one of my favourite quotes, one that, as a social theorist, drives my teaching approach. Continue reading “How and Why Should You Bring Culture on The Edge in the Classroom”