Chicago conference

The reason I was in Chicago on election day was that I had organised a panel discussion at a big academic conference, the annual meeting of the American Academy of religion, the largest gathering of religious studies scholars in the world. I had been encouraged by a nun from the Ramakrishna Order, who knew Isherwood, to propose a panel discussing Isherwood's neglected spiritual writings, and over a period of some 10 months, pulled together contributors from London (Katherine Bucknell, editor of the Isherwood Diaries - 3rd and final volume almost complete), New York (Jamie Carr, a young PhD whose splendid thesis was imemdiately picked up by Routledge), a scholar from Italy (Mario Faraone), and the nun, Pravrajika Vrajaprana. The panel was presided over by Dr james Berg, who has published three edited volumes of essays on Isherwood and collections of Isherwood pieces.

As a result of this initiative I have been approached by a professor of religion from Barnard College, at Columbia University, to guest edit a special issue of her journal and I have asked James Berg to work with me on that. The name of her journal is: 'Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds', an interdisciplinary journal published by Equinox Publishers (UK).

She made this offer on the strength of the blurb I wrote for the AAR conference program... I'll publish that in a separate post...