R&AC Proceedings, Experiences as a Grad Student

Today, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture made its Proceedings available. This publication allows those who were not able to make it to Indianapolis in June to access the ideas shared at the conference. Or, for those like me, it helps attendees view those ideas with fresh eyes. 

In conjunction with the the publication of the Proceedings, today's guest post reviews R&AC's 5th Biennial Conference from the perspective of a first-year PhD student. Our guest author is  Melanie Monteclaro Pace, a Ph.D. student in American Religions at the University of Virginia. Readers can follow her on Twitter: @monteclaro_pace

Melanie Monteclaro Pace

In June, I drove from Charlottesville to Indianapolis to attend the 5th Biennial Conference on Religion & American Culture. As a first-time conference attendee, I wasn’t sure what to expect—especially at an event that typically draws only a handful of graduate students, and even fewer first-year Ph.D. students like myself.

And, you might well ask: Why would a graduate student want to attend a conference like R&AC?

However, I’m happy to report that being a graduate student at R&AC 2017 was such a cool experience. And by that, I mean it was a professional development opportunity that I would recommend to any graduate student in the field of American religion. Here are some reasons I found attending this conference so valuable:

Connection. At R&AC, I got to meet the scholars whose work I’d been getting to know over the course of the past year—an opportunity unique to a small gathering that is difficult to come by at larger conferences. Nothing beats getting to chat with the folks who are writing the books you’re reading as a way to feel more connected to the field. And connecting to the field in meaningful ways is one of the primary tasks of an early-career graduate student.


Many early-career graduate students struggle with knowing how to position our own scholarship in the field. Attending conferences like R&AC can help with this. At R&AC, I was able to watch scholars engaging with one another in real time, giving me a panoramic view of the state of the field. This year’s sessions included a range of papers addressing cutting-edge topics in the study of American religion, such as the category of religious “nones,” the use of digital methods, and the question of how we might situate American religion in a global context.

Conversation. R&AC is all about conversation. It’s a conversation that begins with the first panel on Day 1, as presenters and audience members settle into the format in the round at 8:30am with their first, second, and possibly third cups of coffee. This conversation not only carries through to the final panel on Day 2, but at lunch, in the hallways, and over snacks at the catered “Nourishment Hub”—which, I’ll pause to observe, included gummy bears and Reese’s Pieces. (I helped myself liberally to both.) 

At R&AC, I got to take part in these conversations about critical issues in religious studies with some of the leading scholars in the field. As an early career graduate student trying to carve out a space of inquiry for myself within scholarship on American religion, it was particularly helpful to witness these conversations between scholars. I was also privy to real talk about the academic job market, teaching in diverse contexts, and the challenges that face early-career faculty. This alone was worth the nine-hour drive.

Community. Networking is important for all early-career graduate students. Even the most well intentioned and generous of the leading scholars in our field don’t have time to review the writing of every aspiring student. So, when we as graduate students are trying to get feedback on a manuscript or, eventually, navigate the job market with the support of influential faculty, it helps if those faculty are able to put a face to a name and a piece of work. R&AC, an unusually intimate conference, can help this happen.


Furthermore, as is the case in much of the academy, religious studies as a discipline is slowly diversifying but remains predominately white and male. This can make it challenging for minority students and women to find peers and faculty who share their experiences. As a first-generation graduate student and woman of color, one of the best parts of R&AC for me was getting to talk with early-career scholars who could share their experiences as women and minorities in the academy. Not only did I benefit from their insights, but I look forward to staying in touch as I continue my studies.

In closing, I’m really glad that I attended R&AC this year. I’d like to offer an additional thank-you to the folks who helped make R&AC a positive experience for me as a graduate student (I’ll do my best to pay it forward!).

And to my fellow graduate students in American religion: I know how challenging it can be to work out the logistics of conference travel and funding. But, if you can, I’d encourage you to attend the 6th Biennial Conference in Religion and American Culture, which takes place in June 2019.

In the meantime, don’t miss the informative—and occasionally entertaining!—Twitter conversation on this year’s conference at #RAAC2017.

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Thinking Seriously about “Taking Seriously”

Today's guest post comes from Haley Iliff, an MA student in the American Religious History program at Florida State. She is currently researching nineteenth-century women in the American west and their popular religious literature.

Haley Iliff

During my first year of graduate work, I wasn’t really sure what it meant to “take religion seriously,” but I was aware it was something required of me if I wanted to be a scholar. Now, about to enter my second year, I’m still not quite sure what the phrase means, but I think Charlie and Adam’s recent posts have given me a place to start thinking about “taking religion seriously” as an aspect of scholarly tone, especially the tone we take when discussion our subjects.

Charlie pointed out to us that white evangelicals often take the brunt of academia’s ironic superiority. There is perhaps a no more popular (and, for some, no more deserving) target of this academic ridicule than David Barton. Circa 2012, when his publisher Thomas Nelson pulled his book The Jefferson Lies from print after finding “some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported,” Barton found himself the topic of numerous biting blog posts. For a while, academics had a field day on the internet with a collective reaction of “can you believe this guy!” coupled with “this is crazy, right?” Barton’s book, and his obtrusive Texas flag button-downs, became a meme for bad scholarship.

Post-Jefferson Lies scandal, I pitched my first conference paper on taking David Barton “seriously.” What I meant was I wanted to move past the collective “this is bad, right?” and find out what he was “really” doing. I envisioned myself a magician who was about to pull back a flashy curtain and give my audience a collective “aha!” moment where we could all appreciate the true nefariousness of Barton’s rhetoric. In my imaginings, I was the untouchable academic taking everyone along, attempting to show them a thing. In terms of his nefariousness, I argued that Barton was not doing history—despite adopting some of the well-worn conventions of the genre. Instead, The Jefferson Lies functions as a how-to book for Barton’s readers, giving them the steps to argue that Jefferson was a Bible-believing Christian and, by extension, America was a nation divinely blessed by God (1).

Throughout the writing process, I noticed I only used this phrase when explaining my project to academic friends. I would say “Oh, I’m working on a paper where I take David Barton seriously,” and this statement didn’t really need further explanation. Yet when my non-academic friends asked me what I was working on, it never even occurred to me to frame my project with this terminology. Instead I said to them, “Academics spend a lot of time making fun of David Barton, but I think there’s something more we can learn from him besides how to do history poorly, especially when we look at the way he talks to his readers.” This is, undeniably, a much clearer explanation of my argument, but when talking to fellow scholars there was something about the declaration that I was taking Barton “seriously” that felt more legitimate to me. This falls in line with Adam’s point that “seriousness” is an academic posturing, one that I would never use with my peers who would find that posture alienating at worst and confusing at best. It never occurred to them that I would be taking something I was working on unseriously in the first place.

To take Barton seriously meant I used my academic training to dissect and analyze his rhetoric that so easily swayed his target audience. To take him seriously meant I could be the magician pulling back the curtain telling my friends “look, this is what’s really happening.” It was as though my higher education, signaled by my ability to take him “seriously,” was an immunization to his infectious prose. I’m not really sure what to make of this. On the one hand, my professors have taught me, rigorously, how to analyze and identify constructions in texts and in subjects. I do have the training to analyze Barton’s rhetorical choices. But does my ability to pull back the shiny curtain really mean anything?

I think the academic posturing of “taking x seriously” delineates who can (and who cannot) participate in conversations. This is evident through my refusal to explain my project in these terms to non-academic friends, but more so in a careless use of the third person plural. I stated earlier that I wanted a moment where we could all appreciate Barton’s true nefariousness. I opened my conference presentation by saying “most of us are here are probably familiar with David Barton.” But who was the “we” and the “us” really? From the opening line of my paper, it was not everyone in the room, but only to those who did know who David Barton is and were ready to engage in thinking critically about his work. As Melissa Wilcox said at R&AC, the “we” in scholarship often renders questions illegible to some and renders other groups of people incapable of joining the conversation. In a sense, this is what “I’m going to take x seriously” is code for. Translation: “I’m going to use my academic training to analyze a thing and it probably won’t be accessible to those without the same academic training as me.”

That’s not to say that’s always a problem: modern academia is built on the specialization of knowledge. It’s where I came from when I tried to tackle Barton, and I still like that paper. So, while I’m not sure the claim of “taking x seriously” is always analogous with an elevated and alienating mindset, I do think it has a tendency to lean in that direction. Maybe it’s more about thinking seriously about who your audience is, what you’re trying to say to them, and being cognizant of those who you might render incapable of joining the conversation.

(1) Two of the best examples of this aspect of Barton’s rhetoric are in chapter three where Barton discusses the Jefferson Bible and ends by telling his readers, “So the next time someone refers to a so-called Jefferson Bible, ask them to identify the specific work about which they are talking…Then ask them where they got their information” (83).

(2) Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore.

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RiAH at 10: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges!

Elesha Coffman

I like academic conferences. Always have. Way back when I was the editor of Christian History magazine, I attended a Conference on Faith and History meeting in San Diego and then the American Society of Church History winter meeting in San Francisco, searching for new story ideas and potential authors. My husband, Eric, was with me in San Francisco, and we found ourselves in an elevator with two tweed-coated male historians who were so engrossed in their conversation that they were just riding up and down, oblivious to whatever floor they were supposed to be heading to. When we were out of earshot, Eric asked me, "Are these your people?" and I knew that the answer was "Yes." Soon I had left journalism for grad school in the history of American religion.

This blog has functioned, for me, primarily as an extension of academic conferences. My very first posts, in summer 2011, recapped the Religion and American Culture conference, which had raised two huge questions: "Do Religion Scholars Read the Bible?" and what is the "Future of Religion in America?" In my first job, at a school with just two historians and one religion scholar on faculty, I did not get to have these conversations, and I wasn't ready for them to end when I departed from Indianapolis. The inestimable Paul Harvey allowed me to throw my thoughts onto the blog and keep the ball rolling.

One of my favorite conference photos, from Mainz 2014

In the past six years, I've previewed and reviewed numerous other conferences here, as well as shared updates from the American Society of Church History, of which I became a council member in 2015. (Don't forget to renew your membership and stay at the ASCH hotel in D.C. in January!) People I've "met" through RiAH I subsequently met, and often presented alongside, at real-life conferences, where our interactions were enriched by the sustained conversation made possible at this blog. In New York, or Chicago, or wherever, instead of, "Hello, what is it you work on?" while we squint at each other's nametag, it's, "So good to see you, I loved that book review you posted, you're taller than I expected, and how is that new class going?"

In my view, the whole field functions better because we can meet here even when we can't meet in person. Thanks for this tremendous feat of event-planning, Paul!

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The R&AC Conference: Taking Religion "Seriously"

Adam Park

"Why so serious?"--The Joker

With tongue perpetually in cheek, admittedly, I get a little nervous when people get "serious." My skittish ears are therefore perked at the very mention of the s-word. In all its stern demand, the s-word happened a lot this weekend at my favorite conference ever--the Religion & American Culture Conference. And, not incidentally, the s-word happens a lot in Religious Studies. "Taking religion seriously," so it goes. As Michael Altman Twittered (sp.?) the first morning of the conference: "what does it mean 'to take X seriously'? I've heard a lot of that this morning." I second that Twitter query. Though testing my incessantly satirical nerves, I think it worthwhile to explore the nature of our cultivated tone, our asserted imperative, our assumed position, our seriousness. 

Here's what I think is going on. As Charlie McCrary suggested in his previous post, "taking religion seriously" has much to do with assertions of proximity or intimacy to our subject(s). And as Elizabeth Pritchard so insightfully argued, the scholarly injunction to take religion "seriously" is laden with secular liberal assumptions about the existence of a power-neutral space within which to discuss a given topic. Both points taken. Additionally, here's some other things I think we mean when we issue calls to take X "seriously." 

1) I'll start with a mostly benign/obvious point. Serious means both good and thorough. Since the First Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture in 2009, Philip Goff has introduced the purpose of the conference to begin a "serious" dialogue. A serious study is a quality one. With ever the analytic, loquacious, and nimbly nuanced minds, then, serious conversation is how we academics enjoy ourselves. Serious is a scholarly word for fun. A little sad, but whatever. Conferences are our spring breaks. I got so serious Saturday that I could only eat a couple bites of granola and some Advil Sunday morning. But what happens in Indianapolis, does not stay in Indianapolis. 

2) Serious functions to maintain academic boundaries. What is not serious? To take X seriously is to contrast one's seriousness with other unlearned, popular, un-footnoted, or media soundbite discussions of X. In a room full of serious types, Besheer Mohamed had to justify his Pew-ish penchant for brevity and simplification. Cara Burnidge wondered if "history" was code for "legitimate." Probably. Serious certainly is. Language of seriousness is the rhetorical "hallmark of sound scholarship," Pritchard reminds us. Serious is not truthiness. Serious is not Trump tweets. Serious is our academic hegemon's lingua franca. Greek to others. 

3) Serious marks importance ... particularly for an embattled discipline and a presumed neglected topic. Is anyone listening? Historians? Once king in the academy, Kathryn Lofton noted, religion is now lowly pauper. Political scientists and quantitative sociologists don't take religion seriously, but we do. For it is special. To take religion seriously is to protect it. Pastoral. But one is left to wonder, we may take religious "nones" seriously, but do Pastafarians evoke our sense of seriousness? Does Kirk Cameron's acting in Left Behind? Perhaps, partial pastoral. Some things get protected by our seriousness. Other things, well, get left behind. Serious hegemony.

4) Serious is a moral posture. Seriousness is an academic ethic with a (Christian-inflected?) preoccupation with truth and pure intention. To be serious is to be a proxy to the authentic, a voice for the real. To evoke seriousness, Pritchard writes, is "rather like an instance of good manners." Though the source of all this taking religion seriously is somewhat unclear to me, I think a primary wellspring for seriousness is "lived religion." Ahlstrom didn't need serious language. Ethnographic turn. As Robert Orsi spoke at the first R&AC conference, "To take religious experiences of real presences seriously means understanding imaginary beings as having historical life and agency of their own." To believe as they is the serious mantra. Caretaker more than critic. However, as scholars of religion, Orsi adds, this "does not entail ignoring questions of social power." Somewhere between heaven and earth, to be serious is to be disoriented. To be serious requires a certain self awareness, a high degree of introspection. To be serious is to, at least partially, oppose reductionism or simplification. To take religion seriously is to enact an imperative that obliges a certain kind of relation to our religious subject and our inner selves. Charlie got it right. To be serious is to be sincere, honest, true to self and others.

Doing little more than writing a dissertation for the past three years, I've been thinking more unseriously all the while about the place of irony, satire, and humor in writing, in the academy. Levity in analysis. I think there's room. Mama Lola can take it. I would like to see more. I would like to laugh more as I learn more. I'm betting our audiences would like that too. Courtney Lacy Tweeted how "Katy Lofton's speech was a whirlwind of laughter and critique." She wondered "how will this room of traditional intellectuals respond?" Well. Encore. There is, however, a catch. Just as seriousness includes as it excludes, so too does comedy. Muhammed cartoons can kill. Just as seriousness presumes a power-neutral space for dialogue, so too does humor appeal to modern secular liberal assumptions about the right to laugh. There's an impasse here, an irony.

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