What were old women presumed to know about medicine, and why was it always old women? Alongside the trope of…
Do old women know medicine?
epistemology
Hidden figures in Jinnealogy
Visiting Firoz Shah Kotla has much to tell us about Islamic epistemologies, and much to tell us about how to…
Thoughts on tradition in The Iranian Metaphysicals
While this book is an extraordinary accomplishment, rich in its ethnographic wanderings and sophisticated in its theoretical framing, my interest…
A more anxious freedom
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd's Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion is notable for its subtlety and intellectual generosity, as…
Relevance of religious episteme in search of a just peace
Daniel Philpott’s book, Just and Unjust Peace, can be regarded as a milestone for policymakers and academics looking for ways…
9/11 chronomania
Under its congressional mandate to “examine and report upon the facts and causes relating to the terrorist attacks…[and] make a…
Reading the paranormal writing us: An interview with Jeffrey Kripal
Jeffrey Kripal, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, is an authority on the mysterious. His books…
Disenchantment and the mind-dependence of the moral
At the core of contemporary secularism is the denial of the existence of deities and the supernatural. There is only…
Words, war, and worldviews
In the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Mark Juergensmeyer, former president of the AAR, weaves together a brief…
Yearning, yawning, and resisting
Three cheers for Kahn et al., on the occasion of their bold ride into the heart of liberal arts territory,…