I will frame my response to the wonderfully diverse essays in this collection from within this framework of the failure…
The failures and successes of translation
language
Oaths are dangerous and necessary
While oaths and vows are essential and important, they are often fraught with uncertainty, ambiguity, and danger. Here I argue…
The elegy for good days: Encounters with Urdu poetry in Delhi
How do we understand the Islamicness of Urdu poetry and also the spread of Urdu poetry far beyond the bounds…
A women’s march without God (the Father)
Despite the increasing feminist readings of religion, the broader women’s movement frequently overlooks religion, and the result is often an…
Worlding with the Rosetta Stone
Throughout his study, Allan's sensitive attention to forms and practices transports us to the constitutive limits of world literature. Questions…
Practice and performance in ritual language
Does it make a difference to think of ritual language such as prayer in terms of a relation between practice…
A cautious rapprochement: Habermas and Taylor on translation and articulacy
In the past ten to fifteen years, discussions around the contested role of religion in the political public sphere have…
Are academics cloistered?
Recently, The New York Times published an article by Nicholas Kristof that lamented how academics, cloistered like medieval monks, have…
Odd to each other
It is a distinct honor when someone as lettered as Leon Wieseltier takes one on in public, as he does…
Translating Islam in South Asia
At SSRC.org, three former International Dissertation Research Fellows (IDRF) reflect on Ronit Ricci's Islam Translated.