Reading Marronage: Reflecting on the Present and the Future of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures
Release Date: 08/02/2025
Do you understand? Rethinking the grounds of scriptures
Scriptures Everywhere
In this episode, we discuss different forms of knowing and understanding, and how Hurston makes Kossula into scripture even as his stories depict for us strategies for navigating distinct, and sometimes conflicting, scriptural worlds. We particularly examine the language of understanding, and the photograph of him at the end of Hurston's narrative about Kossula.
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Barracoon as Scriptural Locus
Scriptures Everywhere
In this second conversation about scriptures, memory, and Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, we discuss the title of the book and what it tells us about the politics and emphases of scripturalizing practices. We also consider facets of Hurston's and Kossula's language that point us towards practices, ways, and forms of knowing and not knowing.
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Scripturalizing Kossola/Cudjo Lewis: Memory, Naming, and Making the Text of Barracoon
Scriptures Everywhere
In this first episode of our fall 2025 season on memory, we gathered to discuss Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", which was written almost 100 years ago but only published in 2018. We consider how its recent publication represents a form of scripturalizing alongside how Hurston's own work seeks to make a person into scripture.
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Reading Marronage: Reflecting on the Present and the Future of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures
Scriptures Everywhere
In this conversation, first recorded in the fall of 2023, Dr. Arthur Carter, Dr. Rachel Beckley aka Rachel Schwaller, and Dr. Richard Newton discuss how the Institute for Signifying Scriptures currently works as a site of intellectual marronage. What does marronage mean for intellectual life? What is to be gained by the Signifying (on) Scriptures project?
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Reading Scriptures: Reflecting on the Formation of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures after 20 yearsThe Institute for Signifying Scriptures
Scriptures Everywhere
In this conversation, first recorded in the fall of 2023, Dr. Lalruatkima, Dr. Robin Owens, and Dr. Katrina Van Heest discuss the early years of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures in the 2000s. What is the ISS? What were the questions about scriptures that were examined in its first decade?
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Reading Darkness: Reflecting on the African Americans and the Bible Conference After 25 Years
Scriptures Everywhere
In this conversation, first recorded in the fall of 2023, Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew speaks with Dr. Grey Gundaker and Dr. Velma Love about the African Americans and the Bible conference after 25 years. Why did this conference matter in 1999? What are its legacies for the study of the Bible, scriptures, and African American communities?
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ISS@20: Signifying on Scriptures
Scriptures Everywhere
Recorded in 2023, our inaugural episode comes from . Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, talks to fellow scholar Vincent L. Wimbush, Founding Director of the , which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. This episode was originally released to celebrate the annual conference in Atlanta—April 11-13, 2024 under the theme of “Marronage”—and to mark the 25th anniversary of the initial conference that inspired the founding of ISS, along with the publication of African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social...
info_outlineIn this conversation, first recorded in the fall of 2023, Dr. Arthur Carter, Dr. Rachel Beckley aka Rachel Schwaller, and Dr. Richard Newton discuss how the Institute for Signifying Scriptures currently works as a site of intellectual marronage. What does marronage mean for intellectual life? What is to be gained by the Signifying (on) Scriptures project?