Scholarships and Awards

At the end of spring 2021, the Religious Studies Foundation unveiled a new scholarship funded by the generous donations of our alumni and current/retired faculty. The 2022 recipient of the Religious Studies Distinguished Research Award is Allen Duggar. Allen recently presented his research at the American Academy of Religion Southeast Conference and EXPO 2022 at CofC. "Let Every Land Their Tongues Employ: Ritualized Democracy among Shape Note Singers" was well received at ARSE 2022 and won "Outstanding Poster in the Humanities" at EXPO 2022. Congratulations Allen!!!

fsfsd

When Dr. Matthew Cressler planned the final assignment for his Religion in America (RELS 250) class in the spring of 2020, little did he know that Covid19 would change the assignment that was meant to be the Religious Studies’ contribution to the 250th anniversary of the College’s founding. What was a class-wide project morphed into a two-person, two-semester investigation by Religious Studies Honors students, A.J. Williamson and Allen Duggar, funded in part by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Religious Studies Foundation.

Dr. Cressler and Mary Jo Fairchild, manager of research services in CofC’s Special Collections, worked with A.J. and Allen on how to proceed with their research even as the College’s in-person instruction was suspended. Ms. Fairchild photographed and scanned ledgers, documents, and historic pamphlets from archives within Special Collections. She also assisted in locating other materials from other repositories to create a database of primary sources. Fairchild’s work aided Williamson and Duggar in social distancing and working together virtually through the late spring and summer.

What A.J. and Allen found in their research was how “. . . religion, economics, politics, labor, and academia are all intertwined and re-synthesize themselves in interesting ways throughout history, but those forces are still acting upon each other, influencing each other and will continue to do so into the future,” says Duggar, a sophomore majoring in religious studies. “The influence of religion is obvious when we look back at our history, but religion is still acting on the forces that are alive today at the College.”

These discoveries and the historical context they provided surprised the students. They wanted to share their findings on a larger scale and dive further into religion at CofC.

“The research we began over the summer was coming together in much bigger ways than we had originally anticipated,” says Williamson, a junior majoring in religious studies. “It felt necessary for us to continue expanding on what we started so that we could produce something to show the public what our religious history really looks like at the College.” Williamson and Duggar, who produced a video summarizing their summer research, have created a website, which will be a permanent digital home for their findings. In the spring, they plan to focus on researching the history of the study of religion at the College.

Excerpts from an article written for The College Today are used in this piece. Click here to see the original piece. Also, this Project was highlighted in the Post and Courier on Dec.26, 2020. Click here to read it.