Report from American Academy of Religion talk
Added 2016-12-05 14:07:59 +0000 UTCHi everyone! I just wanted to send out a quick message to you all. Two weeks ago I attended the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Try to imagine 10,000 graduate students and scholars of religious studies descending upon the same convention center in San Antonio, TX to share their research. It truly is a crazy spectacle to behold!
I had the opportunity to present a paper on Religion for Breakfast, alerting scholars to the lack of quality educational material about religion on YouTube. The paper was very well received, and I got a lot of good feedback. About a dozen strangers stopped me in the hallways and said they watch the channel, which means at least a few professors are using my videos!
As an apprentice scholar myself, it is important that Religion for Breakfast can withstand scholarly scrutiny. If my colleagues don't think it is useful or rigorous, then they aren't going to use it in their classrooms. It is a tough balancing act trying to produce videos for the general public as well as a scholarly audience, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
I want to again thank you all for being patrons of this channel. You all are keeping it afloat financially, and I appreciate that so much. Stay tuned next week for my first Christmas special (a video on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas) and another one in 3 weeks on the ancient religious uses of frankincence and myrrh!
~Andrew
