The Politics of Debt and Disease

Even before COVID-19, unprecedented levels of public and private borrowing placed debt at the centre of academic and public debates. If access to credit at this stage of the pandemic is crucial for keeping alive economies across the globe, the health crisis has further exacerbated our reliance on borrowing. Massive efforts are expected of states and central banks to support not only individual financial institutions but the financial system as a whole.

Five Essentials of Muslim Preaching

To celebrate the release of Muslim Preaching in the Middle East and Beyond: Historical and Contemporary Case Studies, editors Simon Stjernholm and Elisabeth Özdalga take us through five essential things you should know about Muslim preaching. 1. Synchronised sermons When…

What Is the Point of Literary Criticism?

Anglophone literary criticism has over the last decade engaged in a searching analysis and critique of its own methods. Perhaps surprisingly, much of that debate has considered *how* one should engage in literary interpretation—whether one should read closely or from a distance, interpret in a paranoid or reparative way, emphasize the work’s surface or depth, engage in “critique” or some other mode of attachment—and rather less *why*. But we might benefit from asking that question more openly: what, after all, is the point of literary criticism? Why does this practice merit the sustained intellectual energy so many scholars have devoted to it?

On translation and exegesis in the Zoroastrian religious tradition

The oldest layers of the surviving Zoroastrian texts are in Avestan language and commonly dated to the middle of the second millennium BCE. Exact dates and circumstances of composition, however, remain uncertain, so that little is known about the socio-political context from which these texts emerged. After two millennia of oral transmission, the texts were finally committed to writing, at a time when the language must have no longer been in active use.

Five Vampire Movies You Might Not Have Seen

A staple in cinema for decades, the vampire movie is a genre that is constantly being rejuvenated with fresh blood. Michael Guarneri looks to Italian cinema to introduce five vintage vampire movies you might not have seen. 1) L’ultima preda…