HTI/OP Podcast: The work of ISS and its 20th anniversary

In this episode of OP Talks, Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo talks to fellow religion professor Dr. Vincent Wimbush, Founding Director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures (ISS), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The organization’s upcoming annual conference in Atlanta—to be held April 11-13, 2024 […]

New book advances ISS’s research agenda

Continuing his project of critical analysis of the scriptural formation of culture, Vincent L. Wimbush has gathered in Masquerade: Scripturalizing Modernities through Black Flesh essays by scholars of various backgrounds and orientations who focus in different registers on the theme of masquerade as the “play-element” […]

WaPo Opinion: Originalism is bunk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/01/originalism-liberal-lawyers-supreme-court-trap/

The Abeng | vol 5, no 1

Click here to access The Abeng archive

Conversations on Scripturalizing

Video recordings from two ISS-related events are now available for your viewing. Click on the images for more details. Symposium on Slavery and Dispossession The Carlos Museum@Emory University Sep 29-Oct 21, 2021 White Men’s Magic as Slavery: The Politics of Acquisition, Exhibition, and Scholarship “Masquerade: […]

BURTON L MACK—A PERSONAL TRIBUTE

Burton L. Mack has passed from us. His life (1931-2022), like every life, was, over the passage of time, different aspects of different selves. I was privileged to know a few of the aspects of the selves of Burton Mack (beautifully complemented by the smart […]

Upcoming Lecture

Vincent L. Wimbush, Scholar of Religion and Director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures, will give a Zoom lecture on the study of religion, with Q&A to follow. This lecture is intended to account for the practices, dynamics, operations, and effects—including the patho-logics and politics […]

Scripturalizing from the Senate Floor

Warnock’s Senate speech on Voting Rights is stunning, masterful in many respects. (Shows among other things what has always been the potential of–and high hopes for–radically free Black preacher rhetorics. And on the floor of the U.S. Senate, no less!)  Many points can be made about […]

“Masquerade: Scripturalizing Modernities Through Black Flesh”

“Masquerade: Scripturalizing Modernities Through Black Flesh,” the exhibition, is open to all online. Click on the image/link to browse: http://pitts.emory.edu/masquerade This exhibition invites the viewer to consider how we produce and make use of “scriptures” understood broadly as cultural discourse and media. This means seeing scriptures […]

Watch: Conversations on Caste and Race

In 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴, Isabel Wilkerson brings together the freighted categories of “race” and “caste” and argues that, while the two are not synonymous, they “can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other.” Wilkerson suggests that […]