Merinda Simmons on Marginalia

The Trouble with Post-BlacknessCulture on the Edge member Merinda Simmons has recently published a co-edited volume with Houston Baker, The Trouble with Post-Blackness. Marginalia, a channel of LA Review of Books this week featured an interview with Merinda discussing the volume . Culture on the Edge is doubly involved in this interview, as colleague Monica Miller is one of the hosts in the Conversations in Black series at Marginalia.

Forthcoming from the Edge

A girl sitting on the floor reading a book in a libraryCulture on the Edge was founded in early 2012 as a small research group, comprised of scholars with very different specialties, aiming to produce original research that not only invited readers to rethink how to study identity but also demonstrated how scholars who understand religion to be an ordinary cultural element could also have interesting things to say about other aspects of culture and history. Because books take a little longer to produce than do blog posts, it is worth bearing in mind that this academic blog — begun a year after the group formed — is only one of several venues for publicizing the group’s research.

We’re therefore pleased to announce several volumes that are due out in the coming year, all from Equinox Publishers — an independent UK publisher known for works on theory.

Click the descriptions below to learn more about each volume. Continue reading “Forthcoming from the Edge”

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.

 

 

Prof. Russell McCutcheon at Lehigh University

Dr. Russell T. McCutcheon at Lehigh University

During the last week of October, Culture on the Edge‘s Russell McCutcheon, Monica Miller, and Vaia Touna presented at Lehigh University’s Collaborations: Directions in the Study of Religion. The Edge’s Russell McCutcheon delivered the Plenary address “And That’s Why No One Takes the Humanities Seriously.” The conference included panels on “Tradition,” with a presentation from the Edge’s Vaia Touna, “The Past,” “Identity,” and “Experience,” with a presentation from Monica Miller.

Lehigh University Department of Religious Studies

Lehigh University published a few articles on the conference, which can be found here and here. Lehigh’s own De’Anna Monique Daniels (@DeAnnaMonique) made a Storify of the Plenary which can be found here.

While McCutcheon was there, Lehigh also interviewed him regarding his thoughts on the Humanities and the study of religion in the university. Take a look at what he had to say…

Dr. Russell McCutcheon from Lehigh IMRC.

Special thanks to Lehigh University for hosting this conference and passing this along!