Christopher Benda

ATLAS for Alum Access Changing

Alumni of the Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion have access to several ATLA products (including ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials Plus).  At present, this access requires the use of a username and password that we provide to you.  This will be changing on December 20, 2019:  on that date, we will… Keep reading

New Exhibit in the Divinity Library: The Fall of Communism in Romania in 1989

The violent fall of the Socialist Republic of Romania captured the world’s attention in December, 1989. As anti-Communist demonstrators ransacked party headquarters, propaganda and paraphernalia of the Ceaușescu regime were literally tossed out into trash heaps in protest. In the spirit of “contemporary archeology”, historian Paul Michelson—with family and friends—scavenged these memorabilia as evidence of… Keep reading

New Faculty Interview with Joerg Rieger

Listen to an interview with Divinity School Professor Joerg Rieger about his book Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God. This conversation is the latest in the Authorial Intentions series — interviews that Chris Benda, Librarian for Religious Studies and Theology, has been conducting with Vanderbilt faculty about their publications. More… Keep reading

Citations Made Easier

You’ve just spent the last several hours arranging your disparate ideas into a coherent research paper — and now you have to spend several more hours typing up your citations and bibliography. Does this sound depressingly familiar? Bibliographic management software can make things easier, and staff at the Vanderbilt libraries are available to provide one-on-one… Keep reading

Resource Spotlight: Religious Magazine Archive

The Religious Magazine Archive is a collection of 22 periodicals that represent a variety of religious traditions.  The coverage of the entire collection ranges from 1845 to 2015. Contents include The American Theosophist, The Catholic World, Islamic Horizons, and The Sikh Messenger, among other titles.  More popular than scholarly, these magazines show how religious traditions… Keep reading

New Podcast Episode with Jaco Hamman

A new episode of Chris Benda’s Authorial Intentions podcast is available, featuring an interview with Professor Jaco Hamman about his book, The Millennial Narrative: Sharing a Good Life with the Next Generation. More interviews are available on the Authorial Intentions site on SoundCloud.

Resource Spotlight: Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Religion

Want some background on a religious topic from people you can trust?  Browse to Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Religion, where you’ll find articles about subjects like African Religions, Hinduism, Religion and Art, and Religion in America, among other categories. All of the articles are written by scholars who work in the areas they’re writing about (Vanderbilt’s… Keep reading

Getting to Know Your Divinity Library Staff: MAT Trotter

Margaret Ann Trotter (MAT) has worked for the Vanderbilt University Libraries since 1979.  She began working in the Divinity Library, moved to several other positions around the system, then returned ‘home’ to Divinity in 1994.  Her current position is Manager of Leganto Service; Coordinator of Divinity Reserves. What is something about your job that you… Keep reading

Resource Spotlight: Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954

Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 is a fascinating primary source collection of materials about American Jews from the American Jewish Historical Society, New York.  Completely searchable, the documents in this resource — letters, postcards, telegrams, notebooks, scrapbooks, minutes, reports, financial records, and other materials — provide a wide-ranging yet often intimate picture of the persons… Keep reading