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Aegis 2021
Interview with NHA (National Humanities Association) Member Scott Muir, Conducted by Juli Lindenmayer Scott Muir leads Study the Humanities, an initiative that provides humanities faculty, administrators, and advocates with evidence-based resources and strategies to make the case for studying the humanities as an undergraduate. Scott earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Duke University, an M.T.S. from Emory University, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. His research explores the religious histories of college campuses and the religious dimensions of contemporary camping music festivals. He has taught at Duke, Emory, and Western Carolina University. Juli Lindenmayer: You were a humanities student. Would you tell our readers a little about yourself? How did you come to the NHA? What did your career path look like? Scott Muir: Funnily enough, I was actually a psychology major as an undergraduate. We had very modest major requirements though, so my transcript really reads like a tour of all the different humanities disciplines. I’ve always been a bit of a generalist, which is maybe why I ultimately gravitated toward religious studies and ended up with a minor. I’ve always been very interested in religion.
And I love the way religious studies draws upon the tools of all of the humanities and social sciences disciplines to connect virtually anything — history, art, economics, education, law, etc. — to our deepest values. After college I worked at a very small consulting outfit where the bulk of my job was to take fellow young adults and teenagers through a life and career planning program. I had participated in the program and knew the owner of the company, so my personal connections helped, but so did my humanities background, as well as my years of experience working at summer camps. But I couldn’t help diving back into the humanities, specifically religious studies. I had all these big, driving questions and I felt like I was just getting started when I graduated. I got a master’s at Emory while I continued to do the career counseling work part-time. Those two years were so rich. My goal was to become a professor, so I applied to PhD programs. At first, I didn’t get into any of the programs I applied to and I started to think about other career paths. Then I got into Duke as an alternate. I spent six years there doing a religious studies PhD. It was a really wonderful experience that I made totally my own. I built my two research projects — a comparative religious history of college campuses and
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