Editorial board member Nancy Levene and editor Mona Oraby cocurated this forum on the oath, “the promise, the pledge, the vow, equally the curse, the malediction, the blasphemy.”

As Nancy Levene writes in the introduction, “We invited contributors to write on some element of the oath or its quasi-cognates, including sworn statement, avowal, affirmation, word, word of honor, bond, guarantee, or, as [contributor] Diane Fruchtman augments the list, martyrdom. . . . How might we understand an oath, and how might it understand us? What more is there to say? Or as Derrida wondered about religion, ‘What is happening under this old name?’”

Continue reading the introduction here, before diving into the other essays in this forum.