Al-Ḥarīrī’s Fifty Tales: The Tongues of God and Man
Bruce Fudge on al-Ḥarīrī translated by Michael Cooperson Impostures is ostensibly the translation of a twelfth-century Arabic text entitled “The Maqāmas.” Nobody knows
... [Read More]
Medieval Wisdom for Mental Health in COVID-19
Jenna Phillips on Boccaccio in Quarantine In the wake of the plague outbreak of the mid-fourteenth century, a Florentine physician named Tommaso del
... [Read More]
The Many True Meanings of Christmas
Timothy Larsen on Christmas While the season of Christmas often brings out the best in people, somehow the subject of Christmas does not.
... [Read More]
Marilynne Robinson’s Everyday Saints
Abram Van Engen on Marilynne Robinson In her 2004 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson includes an odd scene. The narrator, an old,
... [Read More]
What Is Soft Matter?
Philip Ball on Tom McLeish The British biologist Peter Medawar called science the art of the soluble. It’s an apt characterization, recognizing that
... [Read More]
Inaugural Poet? An Open Letter to President-elect Joe Biden
Dear President-elect Joe Biden, You quoted Seamus Heaney, W. B. Yeats and Langston Hughes in your speeches, so we feel certain that you’re
... [Read More]
Hebrew Philological Practices from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Geoffrey Khan, Hindy Najman, and Ishay Rosen-Zvi The Forum provides a home for substantial original and creative works of scholarship with the goal
... [Read More]
White Noise and White Silence: Evangelicals and Race
Matthew A. Benton on white evangelicals and racial justice American social unrest after George Floyd’s death (and Breonna Taylor’s, and Ahmaud Arbery’s, and
... [Read More]
Mushaira: Islam, Poetry, and South Asia
Abdul Manan Bhat on Ali Khan Mahmudabad Poetry gatherings have a magic of nearness, an immediacy and intimacy of sorts. The intimacy between
... [Read More]
Moroccan Jews: Perception and Reality
Ilan Benattar on Emily Benichou Gottreich The street signs are often tri-lingual: Arabic, French, and Amazigh, the latter being written in the Tifinagh
... [Read More]