This forum initiates a conversation on the meaning and consequences of death across societies and time periods, drawing together scholars…
Ecologies of the dead and living: Mourning out of place
death and dying
Antiblackness as religion: Black living, Black dying, and Covid-19
This forum explores the white American ritual of Black death. It also ruminates on how scholars of religion reckon with…
Death doulas and diversity: Teaching applied religious studies
In the past few months, I have watched learning in community partnership focus my students: their research has a defined…
Secularism and secularity at the AAR
At the upcoming annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, to be held November 23-26 in Baltimore, a new program unit on “Secularism…
America plus nothing
But Sweet Heaven When I Die is, first and foremost, a book about loss, about death, transience, neglect, and quitting. These…
The evolution of a text
In his 1915 essay, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is indeed impossible to…
Crossed signals and grave misunderstandings
In Sunday school I learned that the cross points to the empty tomb. Given how easily theological concepts jump the…
Immanent spirituality
A worthy touchstone to arbitrate between worldviews immanent and transcendent is the désir d'éternité, the "desire to gather together the…
The butterfly’s unconscious
Youth Without Youth takes us through a strange loop that demands us both cognitively and visually to ask similar questions…