Twitter
Youtube
Facebook
Linkedin
Rss

BASR 2019: The State of the Discipline

Vivian Asimos and Theodora Wildcroft took the opportunity to ask the delegates of BASR 2019 what inspired them about the conference theme, their opinion about major trends in the discipline, and how they were personally feeling about REF 2021.

Listen Now

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

This episode has not been transcribed yet. 

Consider a donation to pay for the cost of editing a transcript?

Featuring

Theo Wildcroft

Vivian Asimos

Aled Thomas

Dawn Llewellyn

Suzanne Owen

Tim Hutchings

Bettina Schmidt

Jonathan Tuckett

David G. Robertson

Christopher R. Cotter

About this episode

The theme of the BASR conference 2019 was “Visualising Cultures: Media, Religion and Technology”. Vivian Asimos and Theodora Wildcroft took the opportunity to ask the delegates a few pertinent questions: what inspired them about the conference theme, their opinion about major trends in the discipline, and how they were personally feeling about REF 2021. Think of this as a ‘state of the discipline’ round up, as we come closer to the end of the year. With thanks to our participants: Suzanne Owen, Dawn Llewellyn, Bettina Schmidt, Jonathan Tuckett, Aled Thomas, Tim Hutchings, David Robertson, Stephen Brooks and Chris Cotter.

 Fund the RSP while you shop! Use an Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, or Amazon.com affiliate link whenever you make a purchase. There’s no additional cost to you, but every bit helps us stay on the air! 

We need your support!

Want to support us directly? Become a monthly Patron or consider giving us a one-time donation through PayPal. 

Related Resources

Framing, Observing, and Exhibiting Yoga: A Response to Bruce Sullivan

Response

One link between yogic practice and museums may come from viewing yogis, yoga teachers, and yoga promoters as performing work comparable to museums in the nearly century and a half history of modern yoga’s global spread. As museums curate, exhibit, frame, spotlight, and annotate their works to an anticipated audience, yoga has similarly been consciously displayed and promoted. Modern yoga’s history can be emplotted through the way it has exhibited itself.
How Ritual Reveals Margins and Marginalization in Buddhist Studies

Response

Elaine Lai's response to our roundtable on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Buddhist Ritual highlights the advantages of working across disciplines. In sum, Lai argues, this roundtable and all such interdisciplinary collaborations remind us of how embedded and contingent our terms can be. Those differences matter, especially as we work to decolonize the academy and democratize access to its efforts, for we must "remember that we are all first and foremost human... and it's time to show up for one another with care," she concludes.
Religious Authority in a Post-Religious Society

Response

Since the 1980s, social and economic pressures to stay within mainstream society have become more prominent, and spiritually minded individuals often seek more limited, loosely bonded participation in New Age-style modes of thought. The question of charismatic and spiritual authority has become ever more relevant in present day Japan, which is an exceedingly “non-religious but spiritual” nation.

Other EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY

Os serés matáves: Pentecostalism in the Prisons of Rio

Podcast

For Brazil’s “killable people”, there are two prevalent ways to deal with the relative hell of prison - both involving allegiance and devotion. You can give your life to the gang or give your life to God. Only three types of people dare to venture into the heart of a Minas Gerais prison: the condemned, the pentecostal pastors leading the prison ministry, ...
The Fate of Earthly Things

Podcast

In this interview, Molly Bassett begins by introducing us to the world of Middle America, the sources scholars use today to study this period and its cultures, and then describes the benefits and challenges of teaching with Meso-American materials. Her students learn not only to challenge the categories scholars use to describe religious ideas like "god," ...
Popular Culture Studies and Bruce Springsteen: Escaping and Embracing Religion

Podcast

"There's always the risk in popular culture studies - first of all, it's so fluid, you know, things change so fast - that the minute you've said something, it's obsolete. And there's always the risk that the material can't bear the weight of analysis," said Kate McCarthy in 2013, shortly after the re-release of her co-edited volume God in the Details. However, ...
‘Modelling Religion’ and the Integration of the Sciences and the Humanities in the Bio-cultural Study of Religion

Podcast

Following his Albert Moore Memorial Lecture at Otago University, celebrating 50 years of Religious Studies at Otago, Professor Wesley Wildman talks to Thomas White regarding the integration of the sciences and the humanities in his bio-cultural approach to the study of religion.
Emile Durkheim

Podcast

"...a vital tradition of the study of religion is the Durkheimian intellectual tradition. Generally dismissed by many in the study of religion because of its supposedly narrow "sociological" bent, the school of scholarship represented by Émile Durkheim, Henri Hubert, Marcel Mauss, Louis Dumont, Roger Caillois, Georges Bataille and others is, ...
Should Scholars of Religion be Critics or Caretakers?

Podcast

The inspiration for this episode came from one of Russell McCutcheon's works which we had encountered through the undergraduate Religious Studies programme at the University of Edinburgh, entitled 'Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion'. The result is this compilation of differing opinions and interpretations ...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).