Category: K.. Merinda Simmons

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Trainwreck-spotting: How We Insist on Not Working on the Railroad and Instead Tie Ourselves to the Tracks

Stressed scholar

A few days ago, my Facebook feed lit up with various threads all linking to the latest academic critique of the academy.  The discussions that afternoon amounted mostly to well-intentioned and kindly commiseration based on the various levels of dissatisfaction among my scholarly nears and dears.  Now, the fact that we were all chatting on our computers through Facebook in the middle of a weekday (myself sipping hot tea in the process) is not unimportant.  But I’ll come back to that after telling you about the piece. Continue reading “Trainwreck-spotting: How We Insist on Not Working on the Railroad and Instead Tie Ourselves to the Tracks”

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Using Four-Lettered Words: Part One

Edgedavinci

“What Justice Kennedy has undertaken in this initial statement of fact, or more properly, of data, that is to say, facts accepted for purposes of the argument…”

–  Jonathan Z. Smith, “God Save This Honourable Court” (Relating Religion, p. 382)

While she was on our campus a few weeks ago, I noticed Monica Miller using the word “data” to refer to the things that she studied — things such as African American religion, scholars of African American religion, rap lyrics, and rap artists — and so I asked her a question or two about what she thought was entailed in that word and why she seemingly opted for it rather purposefully in both her public lecture, the evening before, and then during an informal lunchtime discussion with our students the next day. And then, just the other day, Leslie Smith posted on this site, using this four-lettered word in her post’s title — a use that did not go unnoticed by some on Facebook who soon were debating what was termed the dehumanizing effects of such objectifying terminology. Continue reading “Using Four-Lettered Words: Part One”

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On the Spot with Merinda Simmons

“On the Spot” backs members of Culture on the Edge into a corner to talk about their backgrounds, their ongoing work, and what might be gained by an alternative understanding of how identity works.

merindaQ: Tell us a little bit about your doctoral studies, since they were not carried out in the academic study of religion, yet that’s the field in which you now work as a professor. How was your training in the Department of English relevant to the work you now do and the classes you now teach?

A: I never expected to end up teaching in a Religious Studies department.  But really, my studies in English overlap with the work I now do in a variety of ways.  The strands of literary criticism that I found most interesting were ones that questioned the roles of authorship, text, and readership.  The more literary theory I read, the more difficult it became for me to see “author” and “text”, for example, as two discrete categories.  I remember the first time I read “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes—I was completely floored.  And that was just the beginning!  Continue reading “On the Spot with Merinda Simmons”

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King of the Jungle

a scene from the Lion KingLooks like Prince William’s been listening to Toto…

The latest in the royal baby craze is news about baby-and-future-king George’s nursery theme.  If you haven’t been paying attention to the news (soon to be featured in grocery checkout lines, no doubt), you may not know that the new parents are decking out their baby’s room with an “African theme.” Continue reading “King of the Jungle”

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Look Who’s Talking!

COTE blog 5 photo

 

In the initial post responding to the Reza Aslan/Fox News interview, Craig Martin brought our attention to the ways in which similar logic can be used to launch competing identity claims.  Particularly resonant for me is a quick anecdotal move in his post that contains much when considered carefully.  He notes, “When I go to the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, I see lots of scholarship production tied to scholars’ identities, and much of it is very political.”  I know exactly what he means. Continue reading “Look Who’s Talking!”

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In Other Words…

A little while back, Russell McCutcheon prompted Monica Miller and me to think about the notion of code switching. People use the phrase to refer to everyday modes of discourse that come to be seen or understood as exceptional—specifically the phenomenon of talking or acting in particular ways depending on the group or context that surrounds someone.  He gave us a clip from My Fair Lady as an example.  The story is all about Eliza Doolittle’s (successful, by the accounts of those around her) attempt to become a “lady” rather than—to quote Prof. Higgins’s early assessment—someone “so deliciously low.”  In order to trade her harsh cockney accent for that of a person in high British society, she goes through endless lessons attempting to change her speech, manner of dress, and behavior.  For example, who can forget the famous “rain in Spain” breakthrough? It’s practically on par cinematically with Patty Duke’s spelling out w-a-t-e-r into miracle worker Anne Bancroft’s hand: Continue reading “In Other Words…”

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“Anchors Away!: Or, Can the Subaltern Get a Soundbite?”

Something interesting happened when famous comic bad boy Russell Brand showed up for an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and it’s been making the rounds online ever since.  Hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the morning show is made of a roundtable of pundits and talking heads, mostly discussing politics and current events while making daily dips into pop culture.  And while the co-hosts certainly have their soapboxes (Mika has famously made a second job out of railing against obesity, and Joe was a state representative, for crying out loud), they pride themselves on being serious reporters interested in providing a balance of perspectives when talking about an issue. Continue reading ““Anchors Away!: Or, Can the Subaltern Get a Soundbite?””