Changing Scholarship

Going to the local art supply store was something one of my cousins and I used to love to do as kids. I remember how she used to walk up and down every aisle looking carefully at all the different kinds of paints, brushes, and pencils. I could almost see ...

While teaching a mystical text is deeply enriching to the classroom, I find colleagues have two primary trepidations about teaching The Conference of the Birds: (1) presenting mysticism – a subject undergraduates and nonexperts alike often find impenetrable – in a coherent, lucid manner, and (2) accurately and responsibly discussing its specific Islamic context ...

Disclaimer: We are human. All of our actions are imperfect. So, chisme is imperfect as is every form of human communication. Yes. Chisme can be harmful and sinful. However, I ask that while reading and engaging this call and response, please spend some time imagining and listening to the possibilities ...

A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter decided to grade the weekend we spent together. I don’t know where she got this idea. I didn’t love it. Our weekend scored a 70/100. Readers, over the course of this weekend, we ate pizza, hot dogs, and fried chicken. We went ...

In a first-year seminar guided by the question “Who am I?” my students are often a little shocked that their first reading suggests that they annihilate their sense of self. Though the inner lives of a medieval mystic and a contemporary student at an American university may seem worlds apart, ...