How to be an academic failure
This week I have come across two articles on how to not go about being an academic.
One of these is about how we need to learn to unlearn a lot of the things we learn as undergraduates: Undergraduate Baggage?
The other is absolutely hilarious – a tongue in cheek guide for beginners on how to guarantee becoming an academic failure.
The Academic Résumé: Some Recommendations
The Academic Résumé: Some Recommendations
By L. W. Hurtado, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
The following remarks are intended to give some assistance to the candidate who is perhaps applying for the first academic appointment. They are based on the writer’s experiences as applicant and (as a result of successful applications!) as a participant in the selection and hiring process at academic institutions (on both sides of the Atlantic). I do not claim that these remarks are comprehensive, but I do hope that they may be of help. I should also mention that these observations have to do particularly with the application and hiring processes in a North American setting.1 The procedures are somewhat different in the UK. E.g., British universities tend not to ask for references at application stage, but only for those applicants whom they short-list. Also, whereas you will likely apply directly to the academic department or to the search committee in North America, in the UK you may be asked to send the application through the university’s personnel office.
Continue here
Toward a Typology of Nonreligion (Parts 1 and 2)
I’ve decided to enter the world of YouTube. Not because I had any burning desire to do so, but because I had some material and thought it couldn’t hurt to share it. The following two videos are audio recordings with the accompanying PowerPoint presentation of a paper I presented at the European Association for the Study of Religions’ Annual Conference in Budapest on 19 September 2011. I’m not in the habit of recording my presentations, but as I am writing a conference report on our panel session for the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, it made sense for me to record the full panel. Unfortunately I cannot share the full six-paper panel, or the ensuing discussion, as that would be a breach of privacy/copyright etc etc.
If you have 15 minutes… have a listen. Tell me what you think… and if you would like to read something more substantial, I can send through the full 25,000-word thesis. Feel free to cite this as you will – if you do can you use the following format:
Cotter, Christopher R. 2011. “Toward a Typology of Nonreligion: A Qualitative Analysis of Everyday Narratives of Scottish University Students”, European Association for the Study of Religions Annual Conference, 19 September. Budapest. Available here: <URL>
Enjoy!
What do you read when studying religion (and nonreligion)?
Many people seem to think that I am a bit of a paradox as far as religion is concerned. Maybe this is true, maybe this isn’t. But I thought it would be amusing to share photographs of the bookshelf immediately above my desk – this should give you an idea of the sort of things that I read, or am meant to be reading at the moment. Of course, there are hundreds of journal articles and library books… but these I actually ‘own’ myself. What do you think? Have you read any? Am I missing any classics? Answers on a postcard…
Teaching and Studying Religion
It seems to be that time of year when numerous ‘gig’s get confirmed. I’ll be doing this in December… enjoy!
Teaching and Studying Religion: Choices and Challenges
BSA Meeting Room, Imperial Wharf, London, 15 December 2011, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Religion is not a neutral subject. As with other significant constituents of identity, such as sexuality, gender, ethnicity, or class, the subject of ‘religion’ as a topic for study is not straightforward. And yet, we study it, deconstruct it, analyse, and measure it, recognising as we do that definitions are bound to be contested, fluid, and sometimes slippery. What are the particular challenges and choices this presents in different disciplines, in different places and times? And what are the ethical, political and methodological implications of this?
To find out more about how participants from a variety of disciplines and contexts have engaged with the choices and challenges of teaching and studying religion, join us on December 15 at the BSA Meeting Room in London, for a BSA Socrel symposium, chaired by Abby Day (Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent and Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex) and Anna Strhan (Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent). We are grateful to the Higher Education Academy, for funding. It won’t be your usual ‘stand-and-deliver’ event. Our presenters are working hard to condense their work into short summaries that will be distributed to all participants in advance of the day via e-mail. All participants will be expected to read the summaries and come prepared for a full day of engaging in vibrant exchanges across disciplines, countries, methods and other conventional boundaries.
Total delegate numbers are restricted to 30. Registration for the symposium is now available on the BSA website at http://bsas.esithosting.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10172
Information on the venue location and transport links, is available here.
For any further information, please contact Abby Day (a.day@sussex.ac.uk) and Anna Strhan (as702@kent.ac.uk). The full programme for the day will be published on the BSA Socrel website: http://www.socrel.org.uk/
Keynote lecture by Adam Dinham, Director of Goldsmiths Faith and Civil Society Unit and Programme Director for the ‘Religious Literacy Leadership in Higher Education’ programme
Confirmed Speakers
Discussants: Paul-Francois Tremlett (Department of Religious Studies, Open University), Chris Cotter (Department of Religious Studies, University of Edinburgh) and Anna Strhan (Department of Religious Studies, University of Kent)
Presenters:
- Alison Scott-Baumann (Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, University of Lancaster), Sariya Contractor (Faculty of Education, Health, and Sciences, University of Derby), Women-led Curriculum Development for Modern British Islam
- Saeed A. Khan (Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literature and Cultures, Wayne State University), Current Challenges Facing Instructors of Islamic Studies: a Minefield or Marketplace of Ideas?
- Stephen E. Gregg (School of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, University of Wales, Trinity St David), Lynne Scholefield (School of Theology, Philosophy and History, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham), “But is it Hinduism?” Changing the Subject in Religious Studies
- Saeko Yazaki (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge), Teaching Religion: Far From Spurious Objectivity and Unrestrained Subjectivity
- Anna Van der Kerchove (Institut Européen en Sciences des Religions, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne), Teaching about religious issues in France: from University to classroom. Some remarks about curricula and their implementation in classrooms
- Slawomir Sztajer (Department of the Study of Religion, Adam Mickiewicz University), Teaching Religion and Teaching about Religion in Today’s Poland
- Christina Davis (Forum of Religious and Spiritual Education, King’s College London), Discriminating Tolerance and Religious Education: Dealing with incompatible truth-claims in the classroom
- Janet Eccles and Rebecca Catto (Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, University of Lancaster), Pre-University Experiences of Lived Irreligion
- Jeroen Bouterse (Institute for Philosophy, University of Leiden), Religion in the Scientific Revolution: Concepts and Theories in Historiography
- Sahaya G. Selvam (Psychology of Religion, Heythrop College, University of London), Positive Psychology: a viable theoretical and methodological framework for the psychological study of religion?
- Emma Bell and Scott Taylor (University of Exeter Business School), Spiritual Management Education: Tensions and Contradictions
- Cosimo Zene (Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS), Studying and Teaching the Religion of the Subalterns: a Critical Gramscian Perspective
The Semiotics of Professor Email Signatures…
I’m quite pleased to discover where I stand on this chart with most academics :)
Upcoming Conferences on Secularities, Information & Religion, Multi-Faith Spaces, and Antropology of Religion
Multiple Secularities and Global Interconnectedness, University of Leipzig, 13 – 15 October 2011
In this conference, we further the debate on secularism and secularity by focusing on the challenges arising from globalization and different forms of interconnectedness. Discussing these challenges from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, the conference addresses, amongst other topics, path dependencies and their transformations; vernacular secularities and the vexing question of translatability and interculturality; the usefulness of the ‘Multiple Modernities’ approach as well as the complex interfaces between secularism, colonialism and post-colonial culture.
The conference will start with an opening session on Thursday, 13 October, at 18:00 and end with a plenary session on Saturday, 15 October, at 17:00. The conference is open to all interested participants. Registration can be done through the conference website. The participation fee is 25euro, which includes coffee in the breaks.
Second Annual International Conference on Information & Religion
Theme: Preservation and Access: Facilitating Research in Information and Religion
Keynote: Carisse Berryhill, Ph.D., Special Collections Librarian, Abilene Christian University
May 18-19, 2012 ~ Kent State University, Kent, OHCall for Papers and Posters
The Center for the Study of Information and Religion (CSIR) will host its Second Annual International Conference on Information and Religion in May 2012. This call for papers seeks original contributions in all areas related to information and religion. The conference theme invites participants to share their work in a variety of areas in which scholars are exploring the intersections of religion and information. Topics that might be addressed include but are not limited to the following:
- Preserving and making available religious texts and information objects associated with communities of faith;
- Social uses and appropriations made of these texts and objects;
- The information-seeking behavior of clergy;
- The role of the sermon as an influential communication medium in society; case studies in the sermon preparation task;
- Information in its application to local congregations as communities of practice;
- Faith and many types of intelligence (e.g., emotional intelligence);
- Dissemination of faith messages;
- Intersections of interests in the study of information and religion, where different disciplines might find it worthwhile to collaborate in research.
Prospective participants are encouraged to submit abstracts that report on recent research and scholarship. Contributions to this call for papers should not have been previously published. We also welcome proposals for poster presentations. There are no restrictions on research methodology.Instructions for submitting refereed paper or poster extended abstracts: The abstract should be no longer than 250 words (including research question, methods, results). Include the title of the paper/poster, names, affiliations, and contact information of the authors (with one author to be designated as the contact for the paper). Submit abstracts in PDF or Word format by Dec. 31, 2011, to Dr. Rosemary Du Mont, CSIR Associate, at rdumont@kent.edu. Notification of acceptance: February 1, 2012.
Papers accepted for presentation at the conference will be considered for publication in ASIR (Advances in the Study of Information and Religion). Details regarding submission of full papers will be given to those whose abstracts are accepted for conference presentation. Please note: Presenters are responsible for their own expenses related to the conference, including but not limited to registration fees, lodging, transportation and meals.For more information, please contact Dr. Don Wicks (dwicks@kent.edu), Interim Director of SLIS and Director of CSIR, or Dr. Dan Roland (droland1@kent.edu), CSIR Primary Researcher.
This conference will bring together key outputs from the three year research project Multi-Faith Spaces: Symptoms & Agents of Religious and Social Change, funded by the AHRC/ESRC under the Religion and Society Programme. The project considers how individuals from different religious and cultural backgrounds might be brought together, concretely, within new types of ‘faith space’ that are often simultaneously religious, spiritual and secular. The conference will coincide with the launch of a touring photographic exhibition.Further details can be found at: www.manchester.ac.uk/mfsIn addition to presenting our findings, we hope to encourage contributions from stakeholders within the extended project, alongside a number of individuals working in the area of multi-faith provision (from academic, professional or practitioner backgrounds). To facilitate conversations across disciplinary boundaries, we envisage a range of attendees and contributors from academia, architectural practice, chaplaincy, interior design, public policy, and a host of other fields.We are currently preparing our programme, and would welcome expressions of interest within the following areas (note: this list is not exhaustive, and other contributions are encouraged):- Multi-faith theologies and spatial practice- Theorising multi-faith space- The architecture of multi-faith space- Design and ‘best practice’ issues in multi-faith space- Public policy around multi-faith space- Multi-faith space as sacred space- The management of multi-faith spacePlease indicate whether you would be interested in:Contributing a long paper (20 min. presentation)Contributing a short paper (10 min. presentation)Taking part in a panelContributing to a workshopAttendance onlyFurther information regarding registration and programme will be sent in early October 2011. We currently envisage that there will be no cost for the conference itself, with limited bursaries for meals/refreshments, travel and accommodation, considered on a case-by-case basis.
When: October 18-19, 2011
Where: Aarhus Universitet
Website: http://aal.au.dk/antro/conference-2011-researching-religion/Invited speakers from abroad include:
- Joel Kahn, La Trobe University
- Joseph Bulbulia, Victoria University of Wellington
- Webb Keane, University of Michigan
- Ann Taves, University of California-Santa Barbara
- William Waldron, Middlebury College
- David Wulff, Wheaton College
- Michael Lambek, University of Toronto (keynote speaker)
Local participants will likely include:
- Sally Anderson, Educational Anthropology
- Martijn van Beek, Anthropology
- Jørn Borup, Religion
- Nils Bubandt, Anthropology
- Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, Religion
- Armin W. Geertz, Religion
- Else-Marie Jegindø, Religion
- Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen, Theology and Religion
- Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Religion
- Maria Louw, Anthropology
- Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Religion
- Andreas Roepstorff, Anthropology
- Marianne Schleicher, Religion
- Jesper Sørensen, Religion
- Cameron David Warner, Anthropology
For more information, please contact Cameron David Warner, etncw@hum.au.dk
Two Excellent Resources
Just a quick post to alert you to two excellent resources I have discovered today.
One is the new documentary series from the BBC, entitled The Life of Muhammad. The first episode was just aired this week and it seems to balance informed but accessible scholarship with a respectful but not deferential tone. Thoroughly recommended to anyone who is interested… and indeed those who are not. I just wish everyone could see this sort of programme. Viewers in the UK can click the link and watch it on BBC iPlayer, where it is available until August 1 2011 (duration 60 mins).
The other resource is a website that I have stumbled across and will have to check out in much greater detail over the coming weeks. It is patheos.com, which describes itself as:
the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality and to explore and experience the world’s beliefs. Patheos is the website of choice for the millions of people looking for credible and balanced information or resources about religion. Patheos brings together the public, academia, and the faith leaders in a single environment, and is the place where people turn on a regular basis for insight into questions, issues, and discussions. Patheos is unlike any other online religious and spiritual site and is designed to serve as a resource for those looking to learn more about different belief systems, as well as participate in productive, moderated discussions on some of today’s most talked about and debated topics.
Whilst I haven’t had much of a chance to look around it, and whilst always being slightly irked at seeing religion being treated as distinct entities and institutions to which a specified number of adherents belong etc (the good old ‘world religions’ paradigm raises its head once more), there seem to be a huge number of resources here, with vast amounts information on certainly all the major religions in the world… and resources for teachers, students, academics, religious leaders, interested laypeople and more…
I hope both of these ‘tips’ prove useful :)
UCC offers new MA in Contemporary Religions
I received the following information through a mailing list last night, and thought that it might be of interest to some of the readers of this blog:
A new MA Contemporary Religions programme will be offered by the Study of Religions department at UCC Cork from September 2011. This is the first programme of its kind in Ireland.
The MA may be taken full-time (12 months) or part time (over 2 or 3 years) and will be taught in the evenings. The closing date for applications this year is July 1st. Applications received after this date will be considered if places are still available.
Details of the new MA programme can be accessed from the MA Contemporary Religions link on the dept website at http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/ or at http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/PostgraduateStudies/
For queries about the programme content and delivery or an informal discussion about study options at MA or other levels please contact me or any member of SoR staff (details at http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/Staff/ .
Enquiries about the MA application process (online, via PAC, the Postgraduate Applications Centre) should be directed to the UCC Graduate Studies Office – details of the new MA Contemporary Religions and of the PAC application procedure are at the GSO website http://www.ucc.ie/en/study/postgrad/what/acsss/masters/religion/
Kind regards
Prof. Brian Bocking, Study of Religions Department, CACSSS University College Cork (UCC), Ireland
So You Want To Study Secularism?
Via Harvard University Press Blog:
According to a report in yesterday’s New York Times that is making its way around the internet this morning, this fall Pitzer College will become the first institution to create a department of secular studies and offer a major in secularism. Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion, proposed the department as a way of concentrating study on modern society’s shift away from religion as its primary organizational structure. The Times quotes Zuckerman as saying that “There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious. I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious. You have some countries where huge percentages of people—Czechs, Scandinavians—now call themselves atheists. Canada is experiencing a huge wave of secularization. This is happening very rapidly.”
At HUP over the last handful of years we’ve developed an essential little list of books on this very topic. Consider this our pitch for course adoption.
Our list on secular studies is anchored by Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, published in 2007. The book begins with a simply phrased question that captures the spirit of inquiry behind Pitzer’s new endeavor: “What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” More simply asked than answered, of course.
Taylor notes three senses in which modern Western society could be said to have become secular. One applies to public spaces or social spheres, where behavior and interactions were once guided by religious principles but have now been ostensibly emptied of God. As Taylor notes, this sense of secularization is not incompatible with a continued individual belief in God and embrace of religion. So, a second sense he then identifies is that of a falling off of religious practice and belief.
A Secular Age mostly concerns itself with a third sense, which for Taylor consists of “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.” To Taylor this entails a fundamental shift in what it means to believe, which occurs when belief itself becomes merely an option. From the Introduction:
So what I want to do is examine our society as secular in this third sense, which I could perhaps encapsulate in this way: the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others. I may find it inconceivable that I would abandon my faith, but there are others, including possibly some very close to me, whose way of living I cannot in all honesty just dismiss as depraved, or blind, or unworthy, who have no faith (at least not in God, or the transcendent). Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives. And this will also likely mean that at least in certain milieux, it may be hard to sustain one’s faith. There will be people who feel bound to give it up, even though they mourn its loss. This has been a recognizable experience in our societies, at least since the mid-nineteenth century. There will be many others to whom faith never even seems an eligible possibility. There are certainly millions today of whom this is true.
The book can fairly be said to have galvanized scholarly inquiry into secularism, and any new work on the subject must reckon with Taylor. One we published ourselves is a collection called Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, which we’d informally considered something of a user’s manual for A Secular Age. Edited by Michael Warner, Jonathan Vanantwerpen, and Craig Calhoun, and with contributions from Robert Bellah, Wendy Brown, Taylor himself, and nearly a dozen others, it’s another volume that should make it into the hands of Pitzer’s majors.
We also recently published Steven D. Smith’s The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. Smith argues that public discourse has been drained of force and authenticity because religion was formally forced out but is then usually “smuggled” right back in. If we’re to remain a society that engages in profitable open discussion, Smith says, we’ll have to figure out a way to free discourse from the constraints imposed by secularism.
Forthcoming this fall we have two new books that will surely find a place within any serious curriculum on secularism. One is Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. The book was meant to be a new history of the Reformation, but instead became a much larger examination of its unintended consequences. All of the pluralism that we see in society today, much of which is evoked by the word “secular,” traces back five hundred years to the late Middle Ages, says Gregory. More on this one in the coming months.
Also this fall we’ll publish Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution. Like Gregory’s, this book might seem more suited to a traditional religion department than one devoted to studying secularism, but surely that line will prove itself to be one not easily drawn. As Zuckerman told the Times, part of the impetus for creating Pitzer’s new department was the now-huge number of people who consider themselves atheists. Though atheism and secularism aren’t exactly the same thing, clearly the growing embrace of the one leads us to a society more characterized by the other.
The surge in Atheism owes much to the writing of the so-called “New Atheists,” among them Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. Where the New Atheists cast religion as a war-mongering belief system that should be disproven and then discarded, Bellah synthesizes biological, historical, and sociological research to offer an understanding of what religion actually is and how it developed and changed over time. What’s unique about the book is its focus on human evolution and the development of capacities like storytelling, dance, and mythmaking, which evolved nearly simultaneously around the world into systems we’d now recognize as religion. So, at this world historical moment when so much of Western society seems in a rush to leave religion behind, Bellah, one of our greatest sociologists of religion, has taken the time to reexamine where it came from. So much of what he finds will challenge the very foundations of today’s Atheism that, like A Secular Age, Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution will be critical for understanding the West’s relationship with religion today.
So, secularism studies… surely there’s a syllabus to be made in here somewhere, no?
