In 2019, Liane Carlson wrote about a dying field (hers, the philosophy of religion). Its death arrived more rapidly than most others. She observed that the collective nature of all scholarship (“There…
Experimental books
This forum features four books that raise important questions about experimentation in scholarship, including what rethinking the scholarly book opens up for the study of religion and public life. The four books are Lata Mani’s Myriad Intimacies (Duke University Press, 2022), the multi-authored The Abyss or Life Is Simple (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Shahzad Bashir’s A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022), and Shannon Lee Dawdy’s American Afterlives (Princeton University Press, 2021).
As Mona Oraby, TIF editor, writes in her introduction to the forum, “Each of the four books featured in this forum … is an invitation to collaborative thinking. Each demonstrates the possibilities for thinking together in a time of constriction, of not giving in to an ever-smaller intellectual world. They traverse the fields of film and media studies, creative nonfiction, Islamic studies, religion and literature, cultural anthropology, and philosophy of religion. All differ from traditional single-authored monographs in significant ways, though all are also published by university presses and therefore bear the imprint of peer review, which distinguishes scholarship from other creative work. Their shape toggles between multiple dimensions of experience. Whether through QR codes, uncaptioned stills, or clickable links, references to other modalities of argumentation elasticize the books’ boundaries and boundedness.”
Continue by reading Oraby’s introduction here. Then, check back weekly as a new book is featured. Included in the forum are contributions by the book authors, responses by scholars who were invited to read the featured books, and for the first time on The Immanent Frame, reflections from acquisitions editors and producers. The forum concludes with an essay by William Robert.
Writing without nets
July 17, 2024
“Every morning you climb several flights of stairs, enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and…
A (digital) reformulation of Islamic pasts
July 10, 2024
Among the reactions to my book A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, one that stands out especially concerns…
Shahzad Bashir’s invitation to plurality
July 10, 2024
When I first taught Shahzad Bashir’s interactive book, A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, my students found it…
An invitation to imagine Islam anew
July 10, 2024
It begins with coffee cups. The cover of Shahzad Bashir’s A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures features Lara…
A new vision for scholarly publishing: Access, agency, impact
July 10, 2024
Let me begin with an overview of Brown University Digital Publications (BUDP), which originated from conversations with the Mellon Foundation…
The future of us
July 3, 2024
Audio from the last in-person meeting of A Knausgaard Reading and Writing Collective
Us being changed
July 3, 2024
“I am committed to the idea that the value of this collective’s work has not been dependent on our choice…
Refusing the choice: Neither academic nor novelist, an experiment in writing
July 3, 2024
More than anything, the young Karl Ove Knausgaard wanted to write novels. But he couldn’t. “I couldn’t write, so I…
Writing living
July 3, 2024
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six My Struggle novels take a prominent place in the hallway bookshelves of our apartment. Set in…
Experiments in collective labor
July 3, 2024
Before The Abyss or Life Is Simple came to my attention, Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book 1 was a fixture on…