This paper was my contribution to a roundtable on contingency in religious studies at the annual AAR meeting. I talked through the paper rather than read it as written, so you miss my bad jokes , wild gestures, and animated facial expressions. What is striking to note is that the small audience was all contingent […]
Gendering Contingency in Religious Studies Read More
I keep a notebook for my ideas of what to write. Actually, I keep notebooks (plural), virtual (Evernote) and physical. Fragments of what I write rest in so many places. I cannot corral my words even when I try too. None of my notebooks are even close to full. Blank pages dominate my frenetic handwriting. Each notebook
“Writers are always selling somebody out,” Joan Didion explains in the opening pages of Slouching Toward Bethlehem. These words clawed at me days after reading them in December. Now months later, the words still scratch at me when I begin to write. Didion’s words give me pause as I start new columns and projects. Do writers, implicitly or
On Writing and Selling Out Read More
Almost all of my scholarly life, I’ve researched, written, and taught about depressing topics: the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacy, doomsday prophets, apocalypticism, religious intolerance, horror, and zombies. I spent more than six years of my life analyzing Klan newspapers; too many hours to count making myself familiar with the construction, deployment, and privilege of
When It Hurts To Write Read More
I gave up many things for graduate school, and popular fiction was one of them. Training to be a religious historian meant that reading became my job rather than my beloved hobby. I only had time to read the 30 plus books assigned for seminars each semester. I’ve never read so much in my life
Genre Fiction Saved My Life Read More
I’m not kidding. Really. I made it onto the site. No, I’m not all of a sudden a celebrity, nor did I do something distasteful enough to be noticed (much to the relief of my family). Instead, it is the fault of Neil deGrasse Tyson, or rather, it is the fault of my recent piece
Look, I made Gawker! Read More