Truly, anyone who thinks that Dead Poets Society is a career template is in bad, bad trouble.
Tag Archives: scholarship
Paranthropology newsletter
Paranthropology is the “Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal.” From the website:
The first issue of a new newsletter entitled “Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal” is set to be released this July. While the main emphasis of the journal is on anthropological approaches, it will also branch out into other disciplines – psychology, parapsychology, sociology, folklore, history – as a means to explore the way in which these theoretical methodologies interact and shed light on the paranormal.
Survey on Pagan Elders
Here’s another survey, part of research being done by Aline O’Brien, president of the Cherry Hill Seminary board of directors, “exploring the concept of eldership in contemporary Paganism.”
Hot Baths and Battle Wounds among the Norse
A summary of ancient Norse practices on personal hygiene, bathing, treatment of disease, and battle wounds.
Both the saga literature and forensic studies of skeletal remains suggest that battle injuries could be horrific …. The femur (leg bone) shown to the right is from another man who died of battle injuries in the 11th century. The bone shows clear marks of the impact of ring mail against the bone, suggesting his upper leg was hit with a sword blow so powerful as to force the rings of his mail shirt through the muscles of his leg into contact with the bone. Astonishingly, this injury was not the cause of his death. His skeletal remains show other serious injuries received in that battle. However, it was a cut that partially severed his spine at the neck that killed him.
My own modest reading of the sagas suggest that when two men went at each other with battle axes, usually after no more than two swings of the ax someone had serious arterial bleeding.
But in Iceland they sure loved their natural hot tubs—and who wouldn’t?
(Via Making Light.)
Pagan Counseling Student Seeks Survey Input
A Pagan working on her MA in counseling is seeking other Pagans to take a survey on “needs assessment.”
Please read the explanation page, which links to the survey itself. The survey has three options. You may take it as a practitioner, as clergy (however defined), and as a mental health professional, if you are on of those.
Does a Director Outrank a Dean?
Dean Dad at the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog gives an insider’s look at American academic titles above “professor.”
His blog is worthwhile for anyone trying to climb the academic ladder—or keep from getting knocked off.
Journal on New Religious Movements Seeks Submissions
Call for Papers and Invitation to Subscribe:
The International Journal for the Study of New Religions, published by Equinox in association with the International Society for the Study of New Religions (Sweden), is a new, international vehicle for publishing theoretical and empirically-based studies in the field of new religions.
International Journal for the Study of New Religions considers submissions from both established scholars and research students from all over the world. Articles should be written for a general scholarly audience. All articles are refereed. International Journal for the Study of New Religions is published biannually in May and November. Each issue includes articles and a number of book reviews. The journal is published simultaneously in print and online.
The term “New Religions” can be defined in several ways. ISSNR and IJSNR has chosen to adopt a broad definition. In the narrow sense, “New Religions” is a term applied especially to religious phenomenon that emerged in the West after the mid-1900s.
More widely understood, the term can also include older religious movements or organizations which are “new” in a specific historical context. The term encompasses organized groups as well as less organized movements. Many of these groups and movements are international and can be found in numerous countries.
There are also new religious movements that are specific to a particular country or to a particular area of the world. In recent decades, new religions or new religious movements outside of the Western context have attracted attention.
Additionally, the concept of New Religions includes contemporary Paganism, less organized phenomena, such as the so-called New Age and alternative spirituality, as well as new expressions within established religions.
Papers of no more than 10,000 words (including abstracts and referencing) should should be submitted through the journal website:
Enquiries can be directed to the editors:
Carole M. Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia) carole.cusack@sydney.edu.au
Liselotte Frisk (Dalarna University, Sweden) lfi@du.se
Enquiries about book reviews should be directed to the book review editor:
James R. Lewis (University of Tromsø, Norway) james.lewis@uit.no
Subscription to International Journal for the Study of New Religions is available through the journal website (see the pull-down menus ‘Subscriptions’). Subscription may be to IJSNR alone, or may include membership to the International Society for the Study of New Religions.
The International Society for the Study of New Religions’ inaugural conference will be held at the University of Gothenburg fro May 5-7, 2011. A call for abstracts and further information will be available soon.
Magical Dolls and Missionary Board Games
From Publishers Weekly, a short review of a new book co-authored by Nikki Bado-Fralick, my co-editor in the Pagan Studies book series (This book is not a part of that series, however!)
Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls
by Nikki Bado-Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris, Baylor Univ.
For Bado-Fralick and Sachs Norris (religious studies professors at Iowa State University and Merrimack College, respectively), religious games and dolls are charged with “the magic of childhood combined with the mystery of religion.”
The authors brilliantly use their subject to reveal a complex interplay between worship and the workings of popular culture. A detour into ancient divination practices using dice, magical dolls, and sports as ritual shows these items to be anything but superficial, and raises a central question: why do religious playthings often evoke feelings of unease?
Like the religious toys it analyses, this book is at once fun and serious business. Dolls like Buddy Christ and Nunzilla or unwinnable Buddhist board games may produce a few perplexed laughs, but a game like Missionary Conquest, won by setting up the most global missions, has an undeniably colonialist edge.
The authors also use toys and dolls to explore consumerism, feminism, politics, and the nature of ritual and play. In this readable and fresh look at religious culture, the authors are critical and respectful. They’d rather cast dice than throw stones.
The World of Esotericism
The University of Amsterdam has one of just a few graduate programs in the study of Western Esotericism, which is often contrasted with Christianity as follows (from a lecture handout based on work of Antoine Faivre).
Christianity
Esotericism
Personal deity
Impersonal deity
Creation of the world by fiat
Emanation of world in stages
Material and evil are real
Material and evil ultimately unreal
Humans as creatures
Humans as divine sparks
Incarnation
Entrapped souls
Sin
Ignorance, forgetfulness
Salvation
Enlightenment
church
school
devotion
spiritual disciplines/exercises
Afterlife in heaven or hell
Afterlife in new learning situation
(Note, I do not consider Paganism and esotericism to be identical, although many esoteric elements show up in contemporary Paganisms.)
All of this is a lead up to a fascinating web page put by the esotericism program at the University of Amsterdam, showing relationships between esoteric thought, music, art, and philosophy.
Are Epiphany Dreams Found only in the Past?
The Bryn Mawr Classical Review’s book-review feed recently served up a review of William V. Harris’s Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
The reviewer writes,
Some combination of [cultural expectations, generic demands, and the imperatives of performance and publication.], Harris argues … accounts for the relative frequency in antiquity of the epiphany dream, in which an authoritative figure visits the dreamer and makes a significant statement, and for its rarity in the post-Enlightenment West.
He goes on to argue that if readers say that they too have epiphany dreams, it don’t prove nuthin’:
No doubt some reader of this review is now saying, “But I had an epiphany dream just the other night!” That is the problem with studying dreams: one must work hard to free oneself from dependence on anecdote and from the powerful attraction that dreams have for those who dream them. Appealing to concepts of “selfhood” or “personality” will only reinforce these tendencies by compelling the question, “What does this dream tell us about you?” Harris chooses instead to concentrate on ancient descriptions of dreams and reports of actions based on them. This is a book about dreaming, not about dreams; that is, about behavior and experience in antiquity, not about the ancient self.
If I tell it, it’s only an “anecdote,” but if someone back then wrote it, it’s a “description” and thus useful? But if you act upon the advice of the dream, does that count?
“Epiphany dreams” are not common, but when you have one, you know it.
My example (oops, an ancedote!) was a dream that — at a time when I was not consciously thinking about it — told me to quit my job and go to graduate school in religious studies.
When I awoke with the dream-voice echoing in my ears, I knew that “some god or daemon” had spoken. I immediately started researching university programs, thinking without irony that now I knew what was meant in those biblical accounts of “the Lord spake unto Abraham” or whomever.
Someone or something sure enough spake unto me, and I knew I had to follow the instructions. Or else.
Anyone else had a real epiphany dream? Show of hands? Yes, I thought so.
As to the academic study, there is, I have learned, an almost-complete disconnect between the academic study of ancient Paganism and the study of contemporary polytheism, Paganism, etc.
The former people are mostly in Classics and history, they have an academic heritage a couple of centuries old, and they publish in their own journals, attend their own conferences, and so on.
The latter field only began to take shape in the 1990s.
Some study of ancient Pagan religion does sneak into the Society of Biblical Literature, and when the SBL goes back to having its annual meeting together with the American Academy of Religion’s meeting in 2011, maybe, just maybe, there might some crossover.