Scriptures Everywhere

The Institute for Signifying Scriptures
  • 5.0 (1)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • MONTHLY SERIES

What are scriptures? What is the work people make scriptures do? In this podcast, we come together monthly as a learning community, and we reflect on the relationship between scriptures and particularly persistent themes in the world around us.

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  1. EPISODE 1

    Scripturalizing Kossola/Cudjo Lewis: Memory, Naming, and Making the Text of Barracoon

    In this first episode of our fall 2025 season on memory, we gathered to discuss Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", which was written almost 100 years ago but only published in 2018. We consider how its recent publication represents a form of scripturalizing alongside how Hurston's own work seeks to make a person into scripture.

    47 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Barracoon as Scriptural Site

    In this second conversation about scriptures, memory, and Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon, we discuss the title of the book and what it tells us about the politics and emphases of scripturalizing practices. We also consider facets of Hurston's and Kossula's language that point us towards practices, ways, and forms of knowing and not knowing.

    46 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Do you understand? Rethinking the grounds of scriptures

    In this episode, we discuss different forms of knowing and understanding, and how Hurston makes Kossula into scripture even as his stories depict for us strategies for navigating distinct, and sometimes conflicting, scriptural worlds. We particularly examine the language of understanding, and the photograph of him at the end of Hurston's narrative about Kossula.

    43 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    On Finishing a Book: Memory, Loss, and the Future

    In our final episode of the fall 2025 season, we discuss the role of memory, of how and why we try to forge a sacred past and communal memory, how gender matters to the dynamics of Barracoon as a site of memory, and what it might mean to find messier ground. We look ahead to our meeting in person in Alabama in February 5-7, 2026.

    45 min
See All Season 2 (4)

About

What are scriptures? What is the work people make scriptures do? In this podcast, we come together monthly as a learning community, and we reflect on the relationship between scriptures and particularly persistent themes in the world around us.

Information

  • Creator
    The Institute for Signifying Scriptures
  • Episodes
    8
  • Seasons
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    Scriptures Everywhere