Joe Fassler interviews writer Marilynne Robinson after the publication of her latest collection of essays.
Posts Tagged ‘academia’
May 17th, 2012
Marilynne Robinson on religion, secularism, and literature
posted by Phillip Quintero
April 20th, 2012
In defense of the sociology of religion
posted by Candice ScharfIn a recent contribution to ASA Footnotes, Christian Smith explains why it is crucial for sociologists to take religion seriously, arguing that it is imperative for sociologists to overcome ignorance and bias when it comes to religion.
April 17th, 2012
Why religious studies?
posted by David SloaneOn April 18th, Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life will host Nathan Schneider for a talk on “Why the World Needs Religious Studies (and Why Religious Studies Needs the World).”
March 16th, 2012
Postdoc fellowship: New Circles of Learning for Engaged Scholars Studying Congregations
posted by Candice ScharfThe Boston University School of Theology is seeking a Research Fellow in Congregational Studies for a three-year period, beginning June 1, 2012.
March 9th, 2012
Back to his roots
posted by Matteo Bortolini
When writing about other people, we all should follow Pierre Bourdieu’s advice to not be too fascinated by our human subjects. This is necessary in order to escape the “biographical fallacy,” the temptation to narrate lives as if they were historically continuous and logically consistent wholes. Bourdieu is right. Our lives are a mess of disparate events, novelties and routines, strategic decisions and lapses of reason, chances and regrets, with little, if any, overall meaning. At the same time, as Robert N. Bellah writes at the beginning of his magisterial tour de force, we are narrative animals. We cannot avoid telling stories, and every story has to have a hero, a quest, and a finale. In this brief essay I recount a couple of stories about Religion in Human Evolution, reading through the lines of this fascinating work to find and highlight some of the many threads which connect it to its author’s past.
February 16th, 2012
New resource for religion and new media
posted by Jessica PolebaumThe Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture has recently launched a new resource website featuring an extensive bibliography, “scholar’s index,” blog, and newsfeed: The Network is designed for scholars, students and those interested in exploring topics and questions emerging at the intersections of religion, the internet and new, social and mobile media. The [...]
December 12th, 2011
2012 Lake Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
posted by Wei ZhuThe Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Center on Philanthropy, Indiana University, is currently fielding applications for the 2012 Lake Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
November 9th, 2011
Weber for the 21st century
posted by Richard MadsenFor almost one hundred years, all sociologists of religion have taken Max Weber’s great work on comparative religions as a primary point of departure. Whole libraries of scholarship have been produced to explicate Weber, expand on Weber, disagree with Weber, revise Weber. In the next hundred years, I think, the point of departure will be Robert Bellah rather than Weber. Bellah’s new masterpiece, Religion in Human Evolution is comparable in scope, breadth of scholarship, and depth of erudition to Weber’s study of world religions, but it is grounded in all of the advances of historical, linguistic, and archeological scholarship that have taken place since Weber, as well as theoretical advances in evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
November 2nd, 2011
Where did religion come from?
posted by Robert N. BellahWhen an interviewer for the Atlantic Monthly blog asked me “What prompted you to write this book?” I apparently replied, “Deep desire to know everything: what the universe is and where we are in it.” I don’t deny that I said it—it’s just that I would have thought I would have given a more pedestrian reply, because I am a sociologist, with a Ph.D. in my discipline and some 40 years experience as a professor at Harvard and Berkeley. And I am quite aware that early in the last century Max Weber, in a famous 1918 talk called “Science as a Vocation,” warned that “science has entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and this will forever remain the case.”
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