Gregory Price GrieveAssociate Professor
Ph.D. Religion, University of Chicago 2002
Fall 2012 Courses
Playing with Religion in Digital Games
Dr. Greg Grieve finds religion on the world wide web
Gregory Price Grieve researches and teaches in the intersection of Asian religions, Digital Media, Popular Culture and ethnographic approaches to the study of religion. Grieve is associate professor of Religious Studies and the Director of MERGE: A Network for Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Schoarship at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is also the co-chair of the AAR's Religion and Popular Culture Group, and on the Advisory board for the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. Grieve is the author of numerous articles, the monograph Retheorizing Religion in Nepal and the co-editor of the edited volume Historicizing Tradition in the Study of Religion. Grieve has been a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and the Center for Religion and Media at New York University. He is currently has two books under contract. The first, Digital Zen: Buddhism, Virtual worlds and online Meditation (Routledge) concentrates on Buddhism in the virtual world of Second Life, a 3D interactive world of over 20 million residents in which users interact with one another through animated avatars. The second, Finding Religion in Digital Gaming (Indiana University Press) fills an important gap in the field of game studies by providing a survey of current work in the study of religion, digital gaming, and by offering a focused reflection on how video games inform or reform our understanding and practice of religion.
Areas of Academic Interest
Statement of Teaching
I approach teaching as an intellectual and creative endeavor that is an important element of my own research and scholarship. Like the curious problems that drive my own research, I believe the key for creating in students the habit of life-long learning is posing curious questions; excellent teachers make the material interesting and pertinent to students. Curiosity is important, because effective teachers can use it to instill in students the resources to critically research, think and write about their self-directed inquiries. Teaching is a type of apprenticing, which operates through the asking of increasingly sophisticated questions that speak to each student's zone of development and the bridging of knowledge which challenges students to tackle new concepts, rethink prejudices, and critically re-examine their views of reality.