Dr. Jennifer Barry (Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of Mary Washington) discusses her latest book, Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagina…

In Dare to Lead , there is a story about a center director at a research university who was facing a confidence problem. He had apirations of completing his doctorate, but his life went another direction. Grad school din't pan out. His family fell apart. He moved back home and had to restart his life. Brick by bring, he rebuilt his sense of self--new family, new career, new institution.

I submitted an article last week, so I'm back on the grind for my next book. Yesterday, one of my students was saying how hard it was to disabuse oneself of scholarship as finished work. We all know (and hope for) that finality to be an illusion if we want our work to actually be engaged. I want to write things that will give people something to talk about.

Strategy group meeting and REL Toolbox to help departments remain strong in a challenging time

Off-Script Newsletter I had no idea ListServ could produce HTML newsletters. Who knew? If you haven't signed up for the Off-Script Newsletter, drop your email in the form below so you can stay up on all the news happening in the critical comparative study of scriptures.

I have never had the type of hobbies that are shared by the masses. I have played golf once. I've never been confident enought to play pickup basketball. (I'm not whether the flesh is willing and the sprit is weak or the other way around.) I played one disastrous season of league softball, but that's a story for another time. 😉 …

Off-Script is a monthly Zoom conversation for graduate students and scholars interested in the critical comparative study of scriptures. Think of it as a get-together for our subfield to conne…

Throughout 2025, we hosted Off-Script, a monthly conversation on scriptures, scholarship, and our subfield. Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, the Institute for Signifying Scriptures, and the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts, these Zoom discussions have been a great place to both develop and showcase a critical comparative approach to the study of scriptures.

I’m not anti-tech. I’m just wantonly old school.

The Institute for Signifying Scriptures is launching a monthly, online seminar. The theme for this Fall 2025 is Memory and we'll be reading Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo." The meetings will take place on the first Friday of each month at 10am Pacific. ISS asks that you register at signifiyingscriptures.org. While you're there, check out previous episodes of their podcast…

Last semester at Off-Script, Dr. David Lambert shared how he was reconceptualizing his understanding of "scripture" in light of assemblage theory. Happy to share that you can find his thoughts on this in print!

The story of my writing career in one scene. Please convert your footnotes to in-text citation? Fine, I'll make the switch. Can you meet me halfway with chapter endnotes? Book endnotes! Isn't that a lot of work for the reader, sifting back through the bibliography to find the endnote section? ...not if there isn't a bibliogrpahy. You gotta be kidding me.

The medium isn’t the only the adapted in the film to musical prodcution of Anastasia.

Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy declared, "Thou shalt not steal" in his 1991 decision in the civil case Grand Upright Music Limited v. Warner Brothers Record, Inc.. How does signification theory help to unde...