Previously on Off-Script Fall 2024

Years ago at an annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I was powerwalking into a conference room to get setup before my colleagues arrived. In those early days, my presentations used a lot of dynamic media. Video, audio, handouts…it was all in the game. And this was before conference hotels were offering wi-fi. My conference rig was a suped-up milkcrate that included a laptop, speakers, an iPod touch, cables (lots of cables), and every dongle you can imagine. You might be asking what I’d do if I didn’t have a projector. Let’s just say I had a Plan B, C, and D for such an occasion.

I was usually the first in the room. Setup could take time. But one time, I was suprised to find a colleauge already there. She was a friend, the panel moderator, and no stranger to my routine. As I pulled up to the presenters’ table, she laughed, “Newton, do you DJ on the side? You could throw a party with all that gear.”

Ever since, this has been the energy behind Sowing the Seed. I see this site as an effort to produce good times where students, colleagues, and others can get down on the study of religion, culture, and teaching. It is what we have been doing here for the past 15 or so years. There have been blog posts and videos. We have had essay roundtables and podcasts. And we’ve published productive written exchanges between undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars. Some of those undergraduates are now PhD students. And a few of those graduate students are now professors with students of their own. Who knew?

This last fall, Sowing the Seed broke new ground by hosting “Off-Script: Covnersations on Scriptures, Scholarship and Our Subfield.” This monthly Zoom gathering bring scholars of scriptures together to share their works in progress and their questions. It’s been quite the experiment. We’ve had researchers from all over the globe join us. Listeners of our podcast, Broadcast Seeding, have reached out to expresss their enjoyment of the presentations. If you missed out on our four previous sessions or want to learn more, check out our Live Events page where we post about Off-Script (and other such programs to come).

We ended the semester with a special December Off-Script Office Hours session. This was off the record, but participants encouraged me to do a bit of a write-up.

The idea of this session was to provide a space for our graduate student particpants to share their thoughts and concerns about the critical study of scriptures. After all, Sowing the Seed began –and has largely continued– because I personally felt the need for a generative community interested in a burgeoning subfield. This was that space where I didn’t have to fit into the AAR box or the SBL box. I could just be and be with others interested in this kind of work. I don’t know if I would have made it through the toil of graduate school without it and the community underneath it. More than anything, Off-Script is meant to ensure that no other students and scholars have to worry about finding a group that “gets” what they’re trying to do with the study of scriptures. I found this affirmed by the group assembled–masters students, PhD students, early career scholars, and senior scholars alike.

From the jump, the vibe for the discussion was “party!” We needed it after 2024. We also decided to practice what my friend and colleague, Dr. C. Travis Webb, calls “intellectual intimacy,” giving each other “the time and the space to figure out things aloud and together.”

We talked about the challenge of working on questions and issues that aren’t always taken as worthwhile in the academy. This led us to discuss the rationale and vision for Sowing the Seed–nurting the kind of meaningful conversation of which we want to be a part.

Sometimes we have an easier time defining this vision from the negative. So we talked about what we don’t want for Off-Script, Sowing the Seed, or our careers for that matter. Interaction between people at every career stage– student to senior scholar– should remain a big part of this. We also agreed that gatekeeping goes against the tenor of what we’re trying to accomplish. Instead we want this to be the place where people can count on their work being taken as seriously as we can feasibly take it.

There was a question of networking and whether that captures what all of this is. On the one hand, we don’t want our interactions to be about prestige checklists and who do you know. On the other hand, I think all of us agreed that we can use more meaningful connection. Off-Script and Broadcast Seeding have helped many with this. We also talked about being sounding boards for each other, champions of each other’s work, and collaborators on future projects.

Toward this end, Off-Script commends our conversation partners to plug into the great programming of our co-sponsors–the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, the Institute for Signifying Scriptures, and the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts.

Beyond this, we discussed how Sowing the Seed could continue to play a role in this as people seem to digging what is going on. On that front, I’m happy to report the following:

1. Off-Script now has a listserv, which is a email blast that keeps you in the loop on what’s going on. You can announce opportunties related to the critical study of scriptures that will go to all the subscribers. I’ll be moderating it to filter out the spam and to keep things on message. It’s also a conversation starter, so if you see something you want to discuss more, the email blast will tell you whom you should contact. To subscribe to the listserv, email listserv -at-listserv -dot-ua -dot- edu. Leave the subject blank and in the body, write “subscribe off-script Firstname Lastname”. (NB: You’ll receive an email to confirm your subscription. Check your junkbox and make sure that emails from there and “off-script@listserv.ua.edu” are approved. Once approved, you can email the latter to share things).
   
2. Subscribe to Sowing the Seed. While people say blogs are dead, I’m actually seeing the opposite. They’re alive and well, they just work differently. People are posting long form on substacks, newsletters, and social media instead of their own sites. I need a home base and that’s what Sowing the Seed is for me. And while all the posts hit our socials, their algorithms don’t always help toward alerting you. If you want to make sure you dont’ miss out on our posts, our newsletter will bring posts to your email inbox. Subscribe at the bottom of the page, and you’ll never miss out.
   
3. Let’s collaborate! One outgrowth of Off-Script that I didn’t see coming (at least this quickly) was an interest in participants getting together and making stuff. I’m all for this. What I can contribute on this front is helping to work with our co-sponsors, along with the Sowing the Seed platform, to create space to build the things you need and want as they pertain to the critical study of scriptures. Want to plug in on this kind of thing? Please subscribe to the stuff above as well as engaging with me on our socials @seedpods on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads, and Twitter (sparingly, to be honest), @sowingtheseed on YouTube, and of course SowingTheSeed.org. on the ol’ world wide web. You can also contact me on LinkedIn and via our contact page.
   
4. Finally, join us at Noon (Central) on Zoom for Off-Script this semester. Save the dates below and register here.

Till Next Time

Richard Newton