Author: kate_sandreuter

Today was an interesting meeting, as I met with J. Dana Trent, a professor at Wake Tech who is both an academic and an ordained minister. She weaves her knowledge of religious studies into a narrative of her own personal experiences in an inter-faith marriage in her book, Saffron Cross. Prof. Trent was such an engaging speaker and listener, bearing the curiosity and impressive knowledge of the professors I’ve talked to, as well as a personal interest in my own experiences with faith and a magnetic, vaguely religious way of speaking which harkened back to religious figures in my own life. She gave me a few very interesting articles to read before our meeting, and I particularly enjoyed talking to her about one of them, focused on the decline of Christian-affiliated citizens in the United States. We talked about how although Christianity seems to be on the decline, the fervor and publicity-garnering of Christian southern fundamentalists is on the rise, an interesting reflection of still-dominant American cultural attitudes.

Professor Trent

Today I met with Angela Bischof, a graduate student at Duke University, and Amy Berg, a professor of philosophy at Oberlin college. Both were enriching conversations, allowing me additional insight into what studying philosophy at a graduate level entails, as well as the interdisciplinary capacity of studying and teaching philosophy.

Angela talked to me about her experience with philosophy in college, which she encountered by chance, originally planning studying psychology. Rather than continental philosophy, which I’m primarily interested in, Angela’s research deals with analytic philosophy, as well as studies which overlap with research in psychology. She recently finished a study delving into the question of whether animals can be considered moral agents, which combined philosophy inquiry and logic as well as scientific psychological and behavioral research.

My conversation with Professor Berg was also so interesting. Her work deals with political philosophy, as well as feminist applications of philosophy. She recommended an interesting read to me, called Famine, Affluence and Morality. Both of Bergs and Bischof’s work seemed more grounded than some of the philosophers I have talked to previously, dealing with questions of the morality of state, moral actors, etc.

Duke Campus

I had a particularly interesting conversation today with Dr. Steven Benko at Meredith, who, while being a professor of religious studies, frequently researches outside the traditional confines of comparative religion. He says that he, unlike some other professors in his field, doesn’t like to define religion on a macro scale. He discussed with me how many integral aspects of personal identity can operate as religion on a cultural scale, a point I found interesting.

Our conversation moved into philosophy as well, as he and I discussed some of his research in “cultural analysis”, in addition to authors and movements I’ve been interested in. He noted the importance of scaffolding in approaching academic research, and recommended a variety of authors which could help me tackle thinkers like Lacan and Butler.

Overall, it was a conversation which I felt allowed me to gain an understanding of the latitude allowed to those in academia to contribute to valuable research on a variety of topics of expertise.

Meredith College