This week's #TuesTreat is @DavidFeltmate an Associate Professor of Sociology at Auburn University at Montgomery. He is a sociologist of religion specialising in popular culture with a particular expertise in the sociology of humour. He is interested in the ways that people have

used humour to discuss religious issues in the public and private spheres, and the politics of controversial representations of different religious groups in North America. He is the editor of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/559 
In

In 2017, @DavidFeltmate published his book "Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy." In it he provides compelling conversation and examples of how comedy is effectively used to regulate, determine and signify the 'proper' place of

religion in America. What makes this book unique, and really compelling to students, is that it takes seriously the question of what makes the jokes and comments about religion that each of these shows makes, funny? It doesn't just assume that they are, it really interrogates the

construction and importance of that for understanding the discourse around religion, religion and national identity, and religion in the public sphere. The book was published by NYU Press and is available here: https://nyupress.org/9781479890361/drawn-to-the-gods/https://nyupress.org/9781479890361/drawn-to-the-gods/

@DavidFeltmate has also published a number

of journal articles. His 2016 article, "Rethinking new religious movements beyond a social problems paradigm" was published in Novo Religion, Vol. 20 Issue 2. and argues that the field of new religions studies is driven in large part by a paradigm based in the assumption that

new religious movements are comparable because they are social problems. @DavidFeltmate puts forward an agenda that pushes scholars to move new religions scholarship beyond the social problems paradigm in favor of a paradigm of social possibilities.

2017 saw the publication of "Two Days Before the Day Before an Irritating Truth: The Simpsons and South Park's Environmentalism as a Challenge for Mass Mediating Dark Green Ecological Ethics." by @DavidFeltmate in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 11:3. In

this article, @DavidFeltmate argues scholarship, especially critical scholarship, on pro-environmental and dark green religious themes in popular culture must engage more directly with that culture's means of production. He uses The Simpson's and South Park as a means of

demonstrating how the task of articulating dark green ethics through mass media is inherently challenged by the capitalist modes of production that make opposition to them possible. In so doing, @DavidFeltmate notes how both programmes are inherently hampered by their

reliance on consumer capitalism and its modes of production. Given the climate challenge we are all facing down, this is a particularly salient part of the overall work that religious studies scholars can offer to broader social and global concerns, when they are willing and able

to take the importance and role of popular culture seriously. We look forward to seeing @DavidFeltmate continue to move in these directions and provide us all with important, if sometimes difficult to hear, points about religion and popular culture.