Introduction

Abstract

American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 156–157 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.12 Dialogue Neither Hobby nor Flourish: On the Place of the Lyrical in Writing on Religion Maia Kotrosits, S. Brent Plate Contents 1. Introduction 2. Maia Kotrosits, “Lyricism and Knowledge in the Study of Religion” 3. S. Brent Plate, “Poetic Images, Lyric Words” Introduction It started with a Tweet. Not a very scholarly way to begin but then again this is all about getting away from the constraints of academic writing. Maia Kotrosits complained on Twitter about footnotes, about the scholarly infatuation with a style of writing that delimits experience and, more importantly, delimits the ways we scholars are allowed to write about experience. Brent Plate hit the heart button on Maia’s tweet, and before long Cooper Harriss chimed in and we ended up agreeing to say something beyond 280 tweeted characters. The following two short essays make implicit and explicit arguments about how to write on religion. They are born from both authors’ frustrations with the narrow styles that are the orthopraxy of scholarly analysis. They are complaints Maia Kotrosits 157 against the myth of objectivity that pervades scholarship. And they are manifestos for finding lyrical and poetic writing to be not “hobby or flourish,” but part and parcel of the subject matter itself. Included on American Religion’s website is a briefly annotated list of readings and viewings (and one assignment) that would give lyricism a place in a method and theory course, and honor writing and artistic expression itself as crucial to the content. See https://american-religion.org/lyricalsyllabus. ...