In which we review what we've learned and what we hope you've learned, dear listeners, in this, our very first season/semester of Keeping It 101
Storytime: Sylvester Johnson, African American Religions 1500-2000
Homework: NAH, it's summer break! But we did make some recommendations for religion-related funtime readings.
____
Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
In which we review what we've learned and what we hope you've learned, dear listeners, in this, our very first season/semester of Keeping It 101
Storytime: Sylvester Johnson, African American Religions 1500-2000
Homework: NAH, it's summer break! But we did make some recommendations for religion-related funtime readings.
____
Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.
Ilyse: 0:17
this is Keeping it 101, A killjoy's introduction to religion podcast.
Megan: 0:22
What's up, nerds?
Ilyse: 0:24
Hi, Hello. I'm Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, the shorter half of your keeping it one a one killjoy team. But you knew that already. It's the last day of class for the semester.
Megan: 0:31
I love the way that you have leaned into the shorter half. SLASH: Is this the point in the semester we apologize to all of our South Asian friends for the joke that made you stand on top of the books on our logo?
Ilyse: 0:44
Girl, Let's get through our introductions.
Megan: 0:47
Fine! Hi Hello, I'm Megan Goodwin the other taller, equally unapologetic feminist kill joy in your ears low these last (1st?) 10 episodes. Dust, Wind, dude, it's a Bill and Ted joke.
Ilyse: 1:02
Excellent! There there don't cry, Nerds. The term might be over, but the podcast isn't. And anyway, we have this whole episode to do so. Here's your lesson plan.
Megan: 1:19
What a semester? Who'd have thought you would be listening. We have--this is insane to me--we have over 4500 downloads at the time of recording. Who does that? We did have to do extra special episode about the quarantine in the middle of everything who did that would be prepping the end of the semester so quickly.
Ilyse: 1:39
So today's lesson plan is really simple. Let's talk about what we learned, what we hope you learned and what will be coming up next for Keeping at 101. We know semesters usually end, and then students move on. But this isn't some stodgy old gen ed requirement! You're majoring in Keeping it 101 now, right? We've got summer session and fall semester ahead.
Megan: 2:02
Yes, all right. Keeping it 101 on today. The segment where we do some professor work.
Ilyse: 2:10
As two lady-professors, we are--we're riding this theme of last day of class pretty hard, which to be honest may or may not work in a podcast. I mean, you can listen whenever you want, so our sense of time is irrelevant. The professor work today is more or less a review. Think of it really as the last day of class or L-D-O-C, as some of us cool kids say. We want to name what we think we've taught and talked about and then move into some of the big picture take homes for season one. So, Megan, if we're gonna talk about what we think our audience learned, can you help us get started helping list some of our themes?
Megan: 2:49
I can. And I shall. Yes, we talked about who religion includes and excludes as a category. I--because, of course, I did--talked us through the Satanic Temple, when we talked about legal definitions and protections for religion, the United States we talked about how folks exercise agency to be seen or recognized or protected within a structure that privileges religion specifically through capital and native religions. You, Ilyse, talked about imperialism because of course you did. And the world religions, major religions, minor religions model and what's wrong with it? You shocked and awed us. I remain shocked and awed with TMI about hajj as a way to think about who gets to be religious and how that happens. We also explicitly talked about how religion is not done with us, even if we don't care about religion or we think religion is beneath us, or we think religion is somebody's private business. That cover it?
Ilyse: 3:41
Almost! We also played around with formats, so we did all of that in our normal episodes. And then we also did an extra credit episode with Omid Safi, where we talked with him about social justice, activism, scholarship and love. And then wedid an extracurricular episode about Drag Race, which a lot of you clicked on. So we wrote a thing about it, and a lot more of you clicked on that. So I think I think that's it. That's hours and hours of information, so way to stick with us, nerds! We're so proud of you.
Megan: 4:15
We're so proud of you. You might have noticed that we structure the podcast like a class. Not that we have, yeah, been leaning on this format pretty hard. So the idea is that over the course of the semester, we've built you a set of ideas and a set of tools that you can use to think about religion. We're gonna pull out some major themes of this, our very first season. Single tear.
Ilyse: 4:40
I guess if the question at hand is what do I think one of the major themes is to keep this 101 on today, I think for me--like duh--one of the key issues is how we think about religion in our daily lives. But specifically, the fact that we think about religion in our daily lives is actually impacted by all this heady, nerdy stuff that I've sort of been grinding my axe about all semester. So things like theories of imperialism, legal definitions, the histories we are expressly not taught. Ah, I want everyone, truly everyone--maybe not to know the particulars of how white, Christian, European and American colonizers fundamentally inscribed racial and religious superiority into every single system. But I do want you to know that fact.
Megan: 5:33
Please tell me that fact again, because it is important.
Ilyse: 5:36
Okay, The fact is that white Christian, European colonization, white Christian, American imperialism is everywhere we look. The racial and religious--and as our beloved rock star Judith Wiesenfeld says, religio- racial--systems, that's everywhere we look. Imperialism and the religious or racial systems are ongoing. They are in the floorboards. And so, while I have spent way too much of my life writing about the really nitty gritty of it, including tallow and lard in in rifles in 1857.
Megan: 6:15
Tell me about the rifles, Ilyse.
Ilyse: 6:17
I've told you way too much about the rifles. My point is it'd be neat if you too dear nerds knew about the rifles. But that's actually secondary--tertiary--to me. What I need you to know is the umbrella fact, and that is that imperialism and religion can't be decoupled. And we can't ignore them because they're not dead. They're not passed. That's ongoing.
Ilyse: 6:38
And one of the ways I know that, Megan, is calendars. Calendars. Yeah, I'm just I'm not over the freaking calendars all, And, I ah, the thing I have learned this semester is that I never will be. I didn't know how deep the calendar cut went, but apparently it is like a gash.
Megan: 7:01
Here for it. I'm here for it.
Ilyse: 7:03
Here's here's one of the reasons why. Okay. And bear with me, Megan
Megan: 7:07
Yes, shall always.
Ilyse: 7:09
Alright. As you know, I'm reading Harry Potter with Sela, our erstwhile guest and my ongoing daughter. And for those of you who have read Harry Potter, which statistically is most of you, you know that each book is structured around Hogwarts academic year. And every book my daughter is like, "Why is it Christmas in this book? Why do they have a Christmas break?" Because even she knows that at Hogwarts-- fucking Hogwarts--a makebelieve school for witches and wizards organizes its term and celebrates Christmas. So a bunch of wizards and witches who in the series of this book do not know how to pants literally
Megan: 7:58
Trousers are very confusing.
Ilyse: 7:59
They somehow know about Christmas trees, and not in--like before you cut me off, Megan, comma by witchy best friend--they're not being cutely OG pagans using their "regular" pagan tree at their witches school L O L. It's a freaking Christmas tree. They call it a Christmas tree. They get gifts, they do Christmas crackers. They have--
Megan: 8:26
They ARE Christmas crackers.
Ilyse: 8:33
But like Christmas calendar-normativity is in this magical realism novel that, like, literally, currently boasts more active readers than the Bible. So, yeah, I want to say and think and yell into the podcast atmosphere things like: that the seemingly innocuous, unexamined ways that religion creeps into this kid lit--but also our days and our lives--is actually anything but innocuous. Ron Weasley's heinous maroon Christmas sweater encodes a real statement about the predominance of Christmas, especially like white Anglo styles of Christmas and an unquestioned, unexamined unscrutinized presence of Christianity in a place where it literally should not be.
Ilyse: 9:20
And maybe that's because Rowling is a lazy and transphobic and racist thinker, because all of that's true. But her laziness and transphobia and racism aside, it's also because imperialism and Christian normativity and supremacy is everywhere, even in books about witches and wizards who do not know what what pants are. Hey, so I'm hoping that this little pod helps us examine all the stuff that actually passes as un examined, usually.
Megan: 9:50
Yeah, I just I want to pause on this because I think it's important one. I think the killjoy manifesto truly is: "No, we're not letting it go." So, so bless that--bless your anger and rage at calendars broadly and the persistence of Christmas specifically because Christmas makes me insane. But also like, I want to spend just a moment being aware that lazy thinking falls back on imperialism so easily, falls back on oppression so easily, because we have made it really easy for oppression to keep thriving, right? All you have to do is let it go, and we're not doing that. So good for you and good for you for raising a killjoy who's mad every single time at that bullshit Christmas tree at Hogwarts.
Ilyse: 10:36
Oh, she's so mad. She's so mad at some of this laziness and she's just she's great. May we all raise killjoys.
Megan: 10:44
Hear, hear, whether in our own families or in our classrooms or just in our daily acquaintances.
Ilyse: 10:50
Sure. All right, that's my theme. The theme is too long, didn't read: Calendars are imperialistic. What's yours?
Megan: 10:56
Alright, killjoys: Can't stop, won't stop. Big themes for me, religion is what people do not just what a person does or thinks or believes, which is possibly a thing I yell about on the Internet, basically, every day. If we're being totally honest, that's not actually new, but now I have podcast! So while I'm yelling, I also have episodes to assign. So thanks, friend. Thanks for helping me have receipts!
Ilyse: 11:25
Any time.
Megan: 11:26
For me, one of the most important things we've argued this semester or season is that religion is about communities. It's about systems, it's about institutions. So while lots of folks, and especially Americans, assume religion is about their personal feels, we've showed you how religion shows up in hospitals, calendars. (You might have noticed that Ilyse is not over calendars).
Ilyse: 11:46
Never!
Megan: 11:47
Huzzah! We will not let it go!
Megan: 11:52
So religion is in hospitals, calendars, courts and airports. Our friend Ahmed Ahmed can't just decide a month ahead of time that he's gonna show up for hajj because that's not how hajj works. And he definitely cannot opt out of a--please hear my scare quotes--"totally random" additional screening at the airport just by telling a TSA dude, "Don't worry, Ahmed Ahmed: He's an atheist." We taught a lot about religious difference and how religious difference matters both to the folks practicing the religion and to the cultures and countries folks, religious or not, live, work and raise and teach killjoys. Um, that might sound simple, but we like to keep it 101 with you! We don't treat all religions the same. Yeah, I mean, *we* try to on the podcast, but in the real world, religions are not treated all the same. In the US, for example, we regulate reproductive health care, using "religious" language--more scare quotes, listeners because when I say religious, I'm clearly seeing conservative Christian language govern how we regulate bodies that can make more bodies. (And for more on the subject, please see my soon to be published works.)
Megan: 12:57
Okay, I gotta have my law court moment. Judaism and Islam both allow for contraceptive use right on under circumstances they allow for abortion. But that is not the kind of religious language we hear put forth in American courts. And it's certainly not the kind of religious thinking being made into laws specifically with increased urgency during a pandemic. Uh, I see you Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I fucking see you. (We've got more on that in the show notes.) We're also certainly not seeing a push to respect Satanic Temple members' right to scientifically accurate information, no matter what their seven tenants say. So if nothing else, I think we showed that religion is complicated and messy, which makes sense, because religion is what people do and people are some messy bitches.
Ilyse: 13:45
Yo, they sure are.
Megan: 13:46
They sure are.
Ilyse: 13:48
Well, that's what we hope you nerds learned. Let's talk about what *we* learned because: its primary sources!
Megan: 14:03
PRIMARY SOURCES.
Ilyse: 14:06
Megan, what'd did you learn this season?
Megan: 14:08
I learned that people like the primary sources song, which is really cute I love it! I had a friend specifically ask me to call her and sing primary sources to her, which made me really happy. That's nonsense, because it was so just a thing I did to bug you.
Ilyse: 14:22
Yeah. Yeah, which is our entire relationship, dear nerds.
Megan: 14:28
Can confirm. Like, "Hey Ilyse! Hey Ilyse! Lookit me do this dumb thing! Is it funny!?"
Ilyse: 14:34
"No, Megan. No, it's not." in my role as perpetual straight man.
Megan: 14:40
Literally, so puzzling. It's not your fault, it's not your fault.
Ilyse: 14:44
I was--This is who I am.
Megan: 14:46
You were born this way.
Ilyse: 14:47
Love me or leave me!
Megan: 14:49
Aww, you made in about musical theatre!
Ilyse: 14:52
See--See how I love you?
Megan: 14:54
Oh, it's beautiful. I love it.
Ilyse: 14:56
All right. Tell me about what you learned this season, lady!
Megan: 14:58
All right. All right. All right. Um one. I learned that it is good to maybe take a quick tutorial of feeds software that you're using to edit your podcast replicant, relying on some half remembered nonsense you learned in the literal year 2000. So, anyway, I'm a lot better at audacity and sound editing that I was about six months ago, that's cool.
Megan: 15:22
More pertinent to the the matter of the podcast, I learned that folks care about religion, and they want to learn more about it, which is rad, and I just I'm so excited about that. Many of our teacher friends have told us that they're using this podcast in their classes, which is so lovely to hear we have researcher friends, apparently citing it in their dissertations. (Hey, Jorge!) And we had senior scholars telling them that they're allowed to do that, which made at least one of us cry small earnest tears of having done something that people find useful.
Ilyse: 15:52
Guess which one, folks?
Megan: 15:53
Yeah, it was. It was me. Look at quarantine feels or a lot. Just I'm gonna own them.
Ilyse: 15:59
That's fine. You're also a crier. And we love you anyway--or we love you because not despite!
Megan: 16:04
Aww. Hey thanks.
Megan: 16:07
I learned that lots of folks outside the academy are really interested in this stuff, too. So it's been fun, for example, to hear my partner start using our key words in everyday conversation. So, like sometimes this is just to bug me. At least once it was definitely to score points with our therapist. He dropped a, like, Foucaultian conditions of possibility,
Ilyse: 16:24
Good work, John.
Megan: 16:26
Respect, respect. A lot of times it's to ask about a concept that he was unfamiliar with or he wanted to know more about or he just kind of wanted to think out loud about new ideas, which was really rad. So it's also--I mean, that's that's great. I like him because, you know, I married him, so that worked out.
Megan: 16:44
But also it's It's a really good reminder to me that giving folks tools and vocabulary to think and talk about hard subjects is such a huge step in the right direction that made me feel really good. Possibly the most important thing I learned is that if you can turn collaboration with smart friends into official work time, you should definitely do that. Then, really great. We've said already that Ilyse and I were really inspired by the rad work Hannah McGregor has done on her podcast Secret Feminist Agenda, and she convinced us that more women should be podcasting. And that it's not that hard to do, which is both true and not true, of course. Because yeah, that technology is definitely NOT that hard to figure out. But even fun work is still work, and this has not been the chillest of semesters. My ADHD brain always convinces me that there's enough time to do anything that I really want to do. That was almost kind of true with this first season. But even with all the unforeseen glitches and everything taking longer than I think it should, this is so much fun. And I'm so so proud of the work that we did. You know, a podcast is a really different work product, than a form of publication or even an op ed. We've been joking all season that Keeping it 101 is gutter punk public scholarship, and I'm really into that vibe. Nothing about our show is perfect. But we did this thing, and I'm really, really glad we did. Ilyse, what did you learn?
Ilyse: 18:03
I learned that there's an audience--Hi, nerds, Hi! And I'll say it's really shocking to me just how many nerds there are. We get these little reminder emails from Buzzsprout, the company we use to make sure our podcast shows up in your phones and computers, every time we get another 500 downloads. And there's been so many of those emails that it is shocking.
Megan: 18:26
Truly from all over the world was the thing that blew my mind again, like terrible Americanist, so I'm focused on the United States. But like we were on all the continents but Antarctica, that's crazy. I love it.
Ilyse: 18:40
You get it together, Penguin Scientists!
Megan: 18:44
Seriously, look at your life. Look at your choices!
Ilyse: 18:48
I don't know. Maybe they're working on climate change. We should--we should leave them alone.
Megan: 18:50
Yeah, fair. Fair enough. Take your time.
Ilyse: 18:52
I've also been surprised that "primary sources" is the thing you all talked to us about on Twitter. So I know that the personal is both political and illustrative. I've regularly made my own self part of my teaching, like first of foremost, because feminism, but also because the personal actually serves as a way to connect more of my students to the point. It's just it's weird that y'all are into my mom's bacon double cheeseburgers and my murky adoption papers and my deep love of drag. It's--It is always interesting as a scholar when we are, I think incorrectly, taught but taught nevertheless, that the "I" should be either not present at all or secondary to the work. And so in this format that the "I" or the "we" is so prevalent in what folks are reaching out to chat with us about is--it's interesting. It's--it's really interesting and a little bit destabilizing and honestly, a little bit weird.
Megan: 19:51
Fair. That's fair.
Ilyse: 19:52
I also learned that this unpaid labor is a worthwhile use of our time and that making this pod accessible takes way, way too much work. Yeah, so as a person with hidden disabilities, it's genuinely gutting to see how much work it takes to get things that feel like they should be simple--like transcripts--getting taken care of and taken care of properly. Those are things that we are committed to politically, in every register that you can hear that. But they are also things that, despite paying for a service that is not cheap, we--I--usually spend hours and hours and hours making sure that those transcripts are right and legible and sync up to when you listen along. So that feels like a social justice space that I was both, like, tangentially aware of and shocked when it comes home to roost.
Megan: 20:49
Yeah, can I just--I'm gonna take a moment and I love you out loud. Sorry about it. But, dear listeners, I'm gonna do it since just sit there and take it.
Ilyse: 20:59
That's not good practice!
Megan: 21:02
It is not. It's not good consent practices, but I have a microphone, so you will listen every damn word I have to say. Listeners, You might not know, or you you might not have been encouraged to see, the invisible labor that goes into pulling together transcripts. Again, Hannah McGregor was part of how we learned how important transcripts are to accessibility. We've had that reinforced to us by professor friends who say that they can use podcasts that have transcripts and can't use podcasts that don't. But we do pay for a service. But also it is hours of labor to get the transcript to accurately reflect what we're talking about and that labor has been done almost exclusively by our very own Professor Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst. So I am really grateful for that labor, and I am not surprised but so deeply grateful to be working with somebody who cares enough to do that work and whose commitment to justice and accessibility gets expressed in these ways that might not be visible if you don't go looking for them. Anyway. I appreciate you.
Ilyse: 22:05
I appreciate you too. The number one thing I've learned is that we are grumpy. We're grumpy in real life, we're grumpy on this podcast, which I don't think was its original intention. And I'm gonna I'm gonna assert that it's for all the right reasons. And I'm gonna ask, as we close out primary sources: Have we made y'all grumpy killjoys yet?
Megan: 22:28
I hope so. I really hope so. And, hey, if you found that this podcast made you, I don't know, see religion and pop culture or in your everyday life in different ways, we would super love to hear about that!
Ilyse: 22:40
Yes! And that was primary sources.
Megan: 22:44
PRIMARY SOURCES! Pull up a chair, sit right down, and we'll tell you a tale because it's story time.
Krusty the Clown: 22:57
Hey, kids, it's story time.
Ilyse: 23:00
All right, here we go. It's a short little story time today from Sylvester Johnson's impeccable _African American Religions: 1500 to 2000_, specifically on page 39. I think it nicely sums up a lot of what we've been doing this season or the semester of Keeping It 101. And if you haven't been paying attention, story time is the bit where we see sneak in all of the rad theory in religious studies that we think you ought to know about. It's like broccoli in mac and cheese--except you love broccoli like I do.
Megan: 23:30
It's fucking brilliant.
Ilyse: 23:32
It's fucking brilliant. Alright! So here's this teeny, teeny little bit, and I will read it slowly because just cause it's short doesn't mean it's not complex. Johnson says: "At the intersection of Atlantic Empire and Commerce, of course, was religion among the European trading polities. Christian expansionism was an integral phenomena of Atlantic colonialism. Religion was also an explicitly political affair." [39]
Ilyse: 23:57
I'm gonna stop there. I had initially selected like an insanely long quote, and Megan was like that is not for an audio medium, dear historian. So this little bit, I think, gets at why I am so grateful that this book exists and that I get to think with it. So I love this book for many reasons, but first and foremost, because it's tying American history theories of imperialism and religion through the specific contours of Black and African diasporic folk, and it's making so painfully obvious that we actually can't think about religion without thinking about imperialism. And we can't think about religion as anything but politics. We've been saying all term that religion is people, but also that religion is politics. And so that feels like a nice period at the end of this season that there's really nothing without religion. So I could go on and on. I teach this book in my favorite seminar to teach religion and empire--so before I rant too much, Megan, help me out. What's your take on storytime this week?
Megan: 24:59
Oh, I love this book so much. I love this book so much. This had been on my to read pile for a while, but I specifically assigned it in my upper level honors course at Syracuse called "Black and Blue" about religion and regulation of bodies of color. And we anchored the class in this text, which meant that we read every single word in it. And that's such a luxury that I don't usually get in classes because I teach a lot of intro, and the reason I did that was because Ilyse had been reading it with her students. So you're my origin story on this one, too.
Ilyse: 25:26
I'm your drag mom AND I get to claim that you read this really great book in American religions, even though I am a South Asianist?! I am winning, dear nerds!
Megan: 25:37
We're all winning, because together, we're a genius--I love it! But that's also a really important moment I want to hold up because I think based on conversations that I have had, the folks who are talking about this book in the academy tend to be scholars of empire and not scholars of American religion. Unless they are also scholars of African American religions, which I think suggests that both America as a space and American religious studies in the academy is not even aware a lot of the times how complicit it is in imperialism. When we talk about empire, when Americanists talk about empire, we tend to talk about the Brits and the French, and you know all of those folks on the other side of the ocean as though America was not also a colonial and imperialist space, so that yeah was very important.
Ilyse: 26:28
That's--like you can't hear it, but I just made a giant eyeroll. You should--like that Americanists also don't have to learn all the languages we have to learn, and they are only responsible for, like, six books is just my entire body is mad at that level of racism and myopic vision.
Megan: 26:45
I get it. Like we could talk about this book literally for hours. But that is one of the really radical things that Johnson does with this book is extend the history of American religion of America and of African Americans in what is now the United States for 500 years. Because way too often we talk about America as this 200 year old experiment without paying attention to that. The colonialism, imperialism has been happening for much longer than that. So there's that piece. There's the ways that Johnson brings all all all the receipts on how violent and oppressive but also creative and complicated religion has been in the history of African and African diaspora, it folks both in Western Africa and having been forcibly transported to what is now the United States. This book lives in the same space in my head that Richard Wright's _Native Son_ does in that both of them deny us the consolation of tears. It is so raw that you really you can't look away from it.
Megan: 27:44
The other piece, which was not in this quote, but this book fundamentally rewired my brain and the peace of Johnson that did that was when he talks about the fact that the freedom of some requires the UN-freedom of others, that institutions like democracy necessarily require some folks to have access and privilege and wealth and stability and safety at the expense literally of the bodies and lives of others. And that religion not only is a part of that but that religion helped build that. Religion in the United States gives us our understanding of what racing how we race bodies. So the idea that yeah, there has never been a United States that wasn't white, Christian imperialist. There's never been a global trade system that wasn't white Christian imperialist in some way just how woven into the fabric. Gene Demby talks about white supremacist devaluation of black bodies as part of the source code of the United States. And Johnson just helps us see that in such excruciating and minute detail.
Ilyse: 28:52
Yeah, so this little bit, this little sentence: "Religion was also an explicitly political affair," coupled with language like Christian expansionism, Atlantic Empire and Commerce. Atlantic colonialism. And this is why I picked Johnson for this final class of the season's story time; and it gets at those two themes that we've been hammering home: religion is not done with you, even if you think you're done with religion and imperialism and colonialism are explicitly religious and ongoing.
Megan: 29:27
And flip it. Religion is explicitly colonialist and imperialist, right?
Ilyse: 29:32
Absolutely!
Megan: 29:34
Absolutely.
Ilyse: 29:36
All right, hold on to your butts, nerds because big things air coming!
Megan: 29:42
DUN DUN DUN! OK, it not like dinosaur-big. But it is nerd-big. This semester was such a success that we've got a summer session planned! That's right. It's SMART GRRL SUMMER!. You have to hear the extra Rs because we're doing like a riot grrl nineties thing. It's like if Bikini Kill had a podcast, except that it's it's not actually anything like that. But we can dream?
Ilyse: 30:01
We can.
Megan: 30:03
Smart Grrl Summer is a mini season, with episodes starting in June, taking on broad--err, cause, ladies--broad thematic topics from religion in pop culture, religion and sounds, "cults" (you hear my scare quotes again listeners), and at least one more thing we haven't decided on yet because it's been a long semester, ok? We'll get back to you.
Ilyse: 30:22
After Smart Grrl Summer will be back with another semester's worth of episodes in Fall 2020. That will follow more or less the structure of this first season. So if there's topics or case studies you'd like to hear about, that would be helpful for you as use scramble to put together syllabi, or that you're just burning to know more about, let us know over on Twitter. We definitely already have a structure in place for what we imagine as Season Two, but feedback in pedagogy is a great thing. We are fans of collaboration and collaborative learning.
Megan: 30:55
Hells, yes.
Megan: 30:58
Don't pack up your stuff yet, nerds: You've got homework.
Simpsons: 31:01
Home work. What homework?
Megan: 31:03
We know, we know, SUUUUMMMMMEEEEER. But since we won't be back for a few weeks here, some fun stuff to keep you occupied! Don't forget that all this and more will be in the show notes.
Megan: 31:12
For today's homework, nerds, there's a lot of great summer-ish readings with religion at the core. Here's our go at a list of stuff that you can think about while we're on break. Ilyse, what do you have?
Ilyse: 31:23
I've got G. Willow Wilson, who has a ton of fiction that I revisit. So first and foremost, _Ms Marvel_ for you comic book readers is a delight. _Alif The Unseen_ is, in my mind, a classic and a really fun read.
Megan: 31:39
So good.
Ilyse: 31:40
_The Bird King_, which is Wilson's most recent book, is so incredibly delightful. Beyond Wilson's work, for fiction often set in South Asia and with religion as a theme or an undertone, I am straight up in awe of Amitav Ghosh. Sidebar: We literally use the same or similar archives, like I have clocked the stuff in his bibliography that I have used. And while he writes these magnificent, built-out worlds where colonialism and imperialism and the horrors of them are just so tangible and real and the characters are so deep and magnificent, I write boring academic books with terrible titles, so I am, like, envious and in awe of this man. But specifically, the Ibis Trilogy is something I love. It's not light summer reading, because I do not read light things, but it is a really lovely, built out colonialism-imperialism-race read with extremely compelling characters.
Ilyse: 32:38
But since it was my own assignment that we talked about, summer-ish reads, I should try to do my own homework, which--so when I when I read things that are light, I tend--I went back through my library card records and it seems like I read a lot of queer Muslim Y A? Because I guess that's the future I want! First, I've got Sabina Khan's _The Love and lies of Rukhsana Ali_; then I've got, _Like a Love Story_ by Abdi Nazemian; and finally the really well received _Darius the Great is Not Okay_ by Khorram. (And I know that there's a sequel coming out, I think it's coming out soon, but you want to get in on that book. It's--it's lovely,)
Megan: 33:17
I'm putting all of these on my to read list I'm excited about it.
Ilyse: 33:19
Alright, Megan, share your summer reads!
Megan: 33:20
Shall! So this is maybe cheating because it's only tangentially about religion. But for my birthday last year, I picked up a copy of Nadia Tolokonnikova's _Read and Riot_, which is Pussy Riot's guide to activism, and it fundamentally rewired my brain. It's smart and it's funny. And it had some really practical advice on how to stay engaged when the whole world is on fire, as it is currently, religion-wise. It also has a firsthand account of Pussy Riot's punk prayer protest against the Russian Orthodox Church, and the church is complicit with Putin. So it pairs really nicely with the _Punk Prayer_ documentary, which is quite good. But, um, does have a brief NC 17 bit in the middle in case you were thinking of, I don't know, blind-assigning it in an intro class about religion and gender or something. No, I mentioned that for no reason...
Megan: 34:09
Anyway, possibly cheating again, but whatever, it's our podcast! So one of my favorite things that I read last summer was _Jane Steel_ by Lyndsey Faye. It's a misandrist lesbian murder mystery retelling of Jane Eyre. Lemme just say that again, like misandry, lesbianism, murder mystery, Jane Eyre. Get into it. But, I like, I love this book with my entire being. I finished the novel and immediately started reading it again, but it also has a Sikhi or Sikhism subplot, so technically, counts as homework, kind of. So I read it. I love it. I made Ilyse and our, uh, other work wife Kathleen Foody read it. And I just... It's so funny and smart and yeah, j--just get into it. The end.
Ilyse: 34:56
We say this every week. But ratings matter. Help us make Season two--and help us think if grants are plausible to support our accessibility work--by rating and reviewing the podcast on iTunes. Even if you don't use iTunes, make an account! Give us some stars! Write a review! Help us out!
Megan: 35:07
We live for the stars. You can find Megan--That's me!--on Twitter. Always, basically. Sorry it's not healthy. Anyway @ MPGphd and Ilyse @ ProfIRMF or the show @ KeepingIt_101. You can find us and our show notes--and our cute pictures--on the website at keeping it 101 dot com.
Ilyse: 35:37
So till summer session, peace out nerds!
Megan: 35:41
Do your homework! It's on the syllabus.
Troy and Abed (any time of day): 36:00
Doing anything fun for the summer? No plans. Cool. Cool cool cool.