Episode 301: Welcome Back, Nerds

Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

After a real Florida man of a year, we’re celebrating our first birthday with a new season! We’re back, nerds! 

In today’s birthday episode and kickoff to Season 3, we do a little bit of a review of our first year, a lot of laying down what’s coming, and riff the whole episode on Mary E. Hunt’s assertion that “together, we are a genius.”

The 101:

(where we did the professor-work)

Here’s what we chatted about this episode:

We just keep reminding you that religion is what people do.

What that means is, basically, that religion isn’t just belief (and in fact, it’s more likely to be practices and norms and mores and ideas), and that religion is always bigger than the individual--it’s about communities, and how people decide who’s part of their community and who isn’t, what communities delineate as appropriate vs. not, and how folks make-meaning of the world--texts, divinities, each other, places, actions--together. 

We also keep telling you that religion isn’t done with you.

As individuals, we may say we’re post-religion, or over it, or that it isn’t important, but religion exists—especially in the US—within systems. Law, education, medicine, and calendars. A year ago you may not have thought about calendars that much. But we know Ilyse is in your head now. We’ve harped on the idea that you might not be religious, and that’s fine! But that doesn’t mean religion, as a system and as a set of ideas within major society systems, isn’t acting on you or your communities.

If season 1 was all about religion being what people do and being tied up in systems of power—like law, medicine, and, yes, calendars—season 2 was a deeper dive into race and gender, two other ideas, like religion, that are real and have real effects in the world, but that are social constructs, change over time, and vary by region.

We just spent a whole season outlining how race, gender, and sexuality are omnipresent for individuals and communities. If religion is what people do, and people have race, gender, and sexuality, you better assume you need those frameworks to make sense of any of it.

That’s where we’ve been. Here’s where we said we’re going: APPLIED LEARNING.

We’ve got a new format. Starting next time, we’ve paired episodes off, with the first of two being us, setting up a problem in religion you’ve heard us chat about before more deeply. The second episode of the pair will be us chatting with a leading expert on that very issue. 

This is applied learning! The point of this isn’t just to have weird, interesting conversations with smart folks we admire. We want to think with y’all about how religion is shaping our world—and about how invested many folks are in claiming religion ISN’T important or active anymore. What’s at stake in understanding religion as more than just texts? In acknowledging that religion—and specifically white mainstream Christianity—has uniquely shaped racism and racist violence? Religion (and not, say, cults or magic) as a political force? We’re bringing in (more) experts to help us show y’all how all this works in even more specific ways.

Why a new format for Season 3? No two people can know everything, and let’s be honest: we know a lot. But sometimes it’s also informative to hear things from new perspectives, with nuanced sets of expertise, and with expertise we just plum don’t have.

Season 3 Episodes and Guests:

Story Time!

(the segment where we cite major works, scholars, & ideas in the study of religion)

In this episode’s story time, Ilyse dug up only one of the many places that, Mary E. Hunt, a lesbian feminist theologian, offers her famous advice about scholarship and collaboration.

In this excerpted interview, Hunt talks with the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) a group she co-founded and still co-runs. She’s talking about collaboration, being a scholar, and what’s expected in the academy: 

“The Grail [Catholic-rooted women’s organization] always says ‘Together we’re a genius,’ …  So even though individual work is prioritized by scholars, tenure committees, institutions, etc, Dr Hunt continued: ‘But collaborative work takes the best of what each person has to offer and melds it into a new product is really exciting,’ she said.” (Notes from WATERtalks, December 3, 2014)

Ilyse and Megan talked about this line—”together we are a genius”—in this segment and in primary sources.

In this one, they both talked about how in the academy—and, frankly, in a lot of places—the expectation is that each person does everything on their own. One person is the employee of the month. One person wins the literal Genius Prize. And, in fields like religion, one person writes the book, gives the keynote, teaches the class, wins the award/grant/book contract/etc. But what Hunt is telling us is that work can never be done alone. Her point is that none of us actually knows anything on our own—we learn from people, whether that’s in real life or books or inter webs—and we build on what comes before us. Her point is also that our work is fundamentally better with the knowledge that we can’t do it alone: it’s not just that we can’t it’s that our work is poorer when we try to.

TL;DR: Hunt matters to Ilyse and Megan because collaboration, community, and collectivity are kind of their thing.

Primary Sources!

(the segment where we talk about how the episode’s themes affect us, as humans, because the “I” matters)

We continued to riff on Hunt’s “together, we are a genius” in Primary Sources this week!

Ilyse talked about a wonky seminar with the legendary Prof. Ruel Tyson (may his memory be a blessing). That seminar had bizarre elements to it, including a semester-long project where one’s intellectual genealogy and your biological genealogy were meant to be woven together into one project: how you came to be you, the thinker. You’ve heard Ilyse think critically about her adoption on this podcast? Thank Prof. Tyson: it’s not like Ilyse hadn’t thought about her life and its circumstances, just that she hadn’t seen that metaphor—of being conditional—as part of her intellectual habits, orientation, sympathies.

Megan made Ilyse blush because her example was a writing group Ilyse set up in grad school. Megan talked about the establishment of community, of the work of being vulnerable in public, of the benefit of getting to know others—well—so that you can build your team and your community.

TL;DR: The best thinking is because of collaboration, community, and collectivity.

Homework!

(that’s right, nerds, there’s always more to learn)

Ilyse assigned, well, this website and Twitter!

• Read the Season 3 syllabus! 

• Look through past shownotes if you’re new or you want a refresher! 

• If you’re totally new to religion, Mallory Nye’s Religion: the Basics is a great place to start (in addition to Season 1, duh!) 

• And then I’ll say go follow our Season 3 guests: 

  • Simran Jeet Singh (@simran)

  • Anthea Butler (@AntheaButler)

  • Shaily Patel (@vox_Magica)

  • Ali Olomi (@aaolomi)

Megan didn’t assign much but insisted you check out our Season 3 guests’ public scholarship—Twitter, google them, whatever. And she recommended following the Nap Ministry (@TheNapMinistry) for some wholesome self-care nap love.

Have your birthday cake and eat it too, nerds.