All posts by Brooke

I have a problem with the word “favorite.” I tend to describe too many things, in the same category, as my favorite, which is factually impossible. I have about a dozen favorite restaurants in the city of St. Louis alone (including but not limited to Mission Taco, Byrd and Barrel, and Bailey’s Range). By the very nature of the word, there can only be one. My only consistent use of the word is when I employ it to describe the Women’s Building, my actual favorite building on this campus.

I attended Shakespeare in the Park for the very first time on a warm, Wednesday night several weeks ago. The play was, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” a play I had seen several renditions of before, as well as the movie adaptation. This time was a completely different kind of experience.

Professor Roshan Abraham kicked off Thinking About Religion, a sixty person class, by showing a deeply uncomfortable interview to his students. It was an interview of Reza Aslan, the author of an academic book about Jesus entitled Zealot. The interviewer was incessantly questioning Aslan’s ability to write objectively about Christianity, given that he is a Muslim. That interview raises some important questions, like can a person who isn’t Christian objectively study Christianity? Can a person who is Christian objectively study Christianity? What does it even mean to study a religion objectively?

I am so excited to be writing for the 360 blog this summer! A little bit about me… My geographic history is a complicated one. I was born in Palo Alto, California, went to High School in Portland, Oregon, did a brief stint in rural Minnesota, and have spent my past three years in St. […]