The latest episode of Broadcast Seeding is up! Dr. Susan Asbury (Middle Georgia State University) joined me to discuss her new book, Family Game Night: From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties (University Press of Kentucky). You can listen to it on iTunes, SoundCloud, or here on the site.

The REL Strategy Group newsletter went out this morning! If you are a religious studies professor interested building more resilient, 21st century programs at US colleges and universities, you need to be up on this. Monthly Zoom Meetings Resources to help you promote your program Unhidden Handbook on how to lead Exchanges with colleagues that get it. A whole lot more…. If you want to learn more, join the ListServ by reaching out to me, Richard Newton, [email protected], and checkout the REL Toolbox.

Back in the studio recording another podcast.

A little bit from what I’m reading before the school year ramps up. “Computational cultural critics are incorporating rapidly developing methods of prompt-based and multimodal modeling while increasing their attentions to imagistic, videographic, and sonic analysis. Meanwhile, concepts of form and formalism continue to evolve across the broader humanities.” Tess McNulty and Laura Alice Chapot,“Computation and Form, Reconsidered,” Journal of Cultural Analytics 10.3,

Here we go! Back to a new school year. So far so good, especially for a Monday.

I have a love-hate relationship with games. I love having a common recreational activity to do with people that involves wits, brains, and a fun theme. I absolutely HATE learning the rules. I am not the kind of person who can just start playing and figure out as they go. I want to understand the rules and have adequate to think and ask questions.

Off-Script back with Fall ‘26 gatherings. Grab your calendars and save the date!

Reading around about “scriptures,” “ritual,” and why the twain meet less in scholarship than one would think.

I had no intention of color-coordinating outfits with my reading. But if ever there were a topic …

One of the things I love about the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is our culture of student research. I have the pleasure of advising Sierra Ruden in our Religion in Culture MA program. Sierra has been using discourse analysis to examine the social function of award shows. Sierra's been experimenting with text coding, metadata management, and media production to think through what's going on when artists accept awards. Over on the Study Religion blog, Sierra shares a dispatch from her research. While undergoing this work, she noticed how awards shows buck against the subjectivty of art by creating a veneer of empirical measure.

it was a real treat to be on Dr. Smiti Nathan's amazing anthropology YouTube show, Curiosity Meets the Past. This is a go-to spot to learn about currents in anthropology and archaeology. Dr. Nathan interviewed me about my work and my latest project, Decoding Diaspora: Signifying J. A. Rogers' Mythic Africa.

This Monday, June 15 from Noon EST/11am Central, I’m talking about teaching tactics, pedagogical challenges, and more with the good folks of NAASR. It’s going down on here on Zoom for free courtesy of the North American Association for the Study of Religion. Thanks to my colleague, Dr. Merinda Simmons for the invite and for facilitating this workshop conversation. Hope to see some friendly faces and to make new connections to fellow Religious Studies teachers.

Going into the new month with some not-so-light reading. One of my students asked me how I read, and this picture encapsulates my process pretty well. I scan a work, its arguments and its structure. Then I write in the margins questions of clarification and questions of substance (shoutout Dr. Charles Wood). Then I use sticky notes to label things I want to remember, use, or look at further. Then at some point, I insert the notes into various projects electronically. It’s a lot of fast and repeated iterations of this.

Why is some criticism vital and other, deadly?

ICYMI, I Recently Wrote… Currently Studying I’m reading David Dault’s The Accessorized Bible (Yale University Press, 2026) and thinking about people’s parasocial relationships with cultural texts. I learned a bit about this earlier in the year at Off-Script: Conversations on Scriptures, Scholarship, and Our Subfield. You can listen to that on Broadcast Seeding. Currently Reading Earlier this year, I got into audio books for non-fiction. I’ve been listening to Brené Brown’s Rising Strong. I’m also reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. That’s the print read. Listening to… Ben Howard’s 2014 album, I Forgot Where We Were.

I haven't seen Michael yet, but I have spent some time thinking with James Howard Hill Jr. insightful words on the film. It sounds like this film is most eventful when it asks much of the audience. As Hill said, how exactly does one watch horror?

David Dault (Loyola University Chicago) spoke about his new book at Off-Script. We bring his presentation to you on the podcast, Broadcast Seeding.

San Francisco Airport has an amazing museum that made me pause in the hustle and bustle of travel. Currently up is an exhibit, “Women of Afrofuturism.” It kicks off with Nettice Gaskins’ piece, “mOTHERboard.” I could not have thought of a better way to end a conference on biblical studies, pedagogy, and AI. If you’re flying through, make the trip to @sfomuseum.

San Francisco Airport has an amazing museum that made me pause in the hustle and bustle of travel. Currently up is an exhibit, “Women of Afrofuturism.” It kicks off with Nettice Gaskins’ piece, “mOTHERboard.” I could not have thought of a better way to end a conference on biblical studies, pedagogy, and AI. If you’re flying through, make the trip to @sfomuseum.

Waiting for the reddest of eyes. It’s not Presidents Hall, but it’ll have to do. The semester is almost a wrap, and I’m working on video scripts for my Sociology of Religion course. Looking forward to taking out my new camera for a spin too.