About this project
Think Again was created by Emily Vork and Catie Stewart, students in a University of Alabama senior capstone seminar course in Religious Studies. The mission of this project is to provide a fun and interesting way to "think again," as the title suggests. Mysterious writing excerpts were released throughout the semester leading up to the launch of this website, and participators were asked to figure out what they meant--and how they were connected. Upon the launch of the site, it was revealed that each excerpt is the stream of consciousness of a character, and each character is related to the others by means of one specific event: the Battle of Shiloh. Whether the character is a soldier on the battlefield or a present-day student looking in a history textbook, each person has a separate connection and interpretation of the event. The message the project endeavors to convey is that everyone has a different perspective; history is told by the person telling it. The hope is that you might "think again" about the excerpts, about the project, and about the narratives you hear in your everyday life that are influenced by the person communicating them.
More on Emily Vork
More on Catie Stewart
More on the UA Department of Religious Studies
Emily Vork is a student at the University of Alabama where she arrived after spending her first eighteen years in Ventura County, California. She is majoring in both Religious Studies and History, with a special focus on Southern Studies. Emily will graduate in December 2016 and plans to pursue a graduate degree in the field of Religious Studies the following fall. Her research interests include just about anything south of the Mason-Dixon line, most especially the applications of race and gender theories to the southern belle persona. In her free time, Emily can be found knitting useless stuffed animals, obsessively collecting pictures of pretty things on Pinterest, and wishing she had a dog. She is a remarkably funny person and finds great joy in bullying her long-time roommate and fellow scholar of religion, Catie Stewart. You can contact Emily by following her on Twitter, or you can send her an email here.
Catie Stewart is currently pursuing majors in English and Religious Studies and a minor in Latin at the University of Alabama. She grew up in the heart of Mississippi outside the city limits of Madison, and she has been obsessed with Southern studies and the culture of her home state ever since. Catie will graduate in May of 2017 and plans to pursue a graduate degree in literature focusing on writings of the South--especially those of William Faulkner. She is interested in the ways in which memory functions in Southern discourse and the unique iterations of it in regional literature. When she is not reading or writing, Catie enjoys bass fishing, walking barefoot in the Mississippi mud, and playing her beloved French horn. She is perpetually embarrassed by her peer and roommate Emily Vork, though she always seems to be entertained anyway. You can contact Catie by following her on Twitter, or you can send her an email here.
The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is housed on the second floor of the Reconstruction-era Manly Hall. The department website offers up an excellent summary of its mission:
"Although many students from all across the University of Alabama enroll in Religious Studies courses to fulfill the University's Core Curriculum 'Humanities' requirements, some choose to major, double major, or minor in the study of religion. Doing so allows them to examine in greater detail the histories and functions of a wide variety of texts, myths, rituals, symbols, and institutions. In the process, they take small upper-level classes, get to know professors with national and international scholarly reputations, and acquire skills that enable them to describe, compare, interpret, and explain--skills that they will use long after leaving the Religious Studies classroom."
In giving students the skills and methods to think critically in countless potential situations, the Department of Religious Studies offers students an excellent opportunity for a very beneficial second major. The department's emphasis in digital and online work (like a thriving faculty-student blog) became the inspiration and means for the creation of this website. Think Again is Catie Stewart and Emily Vork's final project for the course REL490: Capstone Senior Seminar.