Tag: social construction

• A Big Fat Lie About Postmodernism

  

  A year or two ago I took a course online about debunking popular misconceptions about things. What you are NOT supposed to do, when debunking a popular misconception, is start with the popular misconception, and then say that it’s incorrect. What will stick in people’s heads if you do that is the misconception. Research has…

  HAT

  November 29, 2018

  Thinking Out Loud

  popular culture, postmodern times, realism, reality, religious studies;, social construction

• Orientalism At Last

  

  Reflections on reading Edward W. Said. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition with a New Preface by the Author. New York: Vintage, 2003 (originally 1978, Afterword 1994). [An installment of the Read Me Project.] In some sense, Orientalism has been on the Read Me shelf for decades. Everyone has their unread classics – there are English majors…

  HAT

  April 11, 2018

  Read Me Project

  books, cultural studies, ideas, Orientalism, Read Me Project, reading, social construction, sociology

• Noticing Social Constructionism

  

  Social constructionism is on my mind. In part because I’m working on the class that starts in May. I’ve learned from experience that it helps to explain, right from the start, that I come at things from a social constructionist point of view. College freshmen don’t necessarily share that perspective. And because I’ve learned recently…

  HAT

  April 4, 2018

  Thinking Out Loud

  critical thinking, epistemology, experience, religious studies;, social construction, social science, teaching

• Remembering Political Correctness

  Lately – that is, over the past year or so – I have heard more and more references to “political correctness.” I used to think I knew what that term meant. Now, however, I have concluded that it is yet another example of the creeping obsolescence of everything I learned in college. Going by context…

  HAT

  August 11, 2017

  Essays

  communication, history, language, memory, personal, political correctness, social construction

• Where are the Western Religions West of?

  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – the typical subjects of “western” world religions courses – originate geographically in south-western Asia, more or less. That’s considerably “east” of, say, Louisville, Kentucky if one were to, for instance, “travel to the Holy Land.” Where are they west of that makes them “western”? That is to say, what’s the…

  HAT

  August 22, 2016

  Thinking Out Loud

  discourse, perspective, questions, religion, social construction, world religions