Reconstructing Kiowa Cosmology: 7 Questions for Benjamin R. Kracht

Benjamin R. Kracht During the summer of 1935, field party director Alexander Lesser and five graduate students—Jane Richardson (Hanks), William Bascom, Bernard Mishkin, Donald Collier, and Weston LaBarre—interviewed approximately thirty-five Kiowas born in the mid-nineteenth century about indigenous Kiowa culture.

Who’s Afraid of the Tooth Fairy?

Kelly J. Baker My six-year old’s smile is missing yet another tooth. She lost her second incisor three weekends ago, and all that remains is a gaping hole where it used to reside. Since the start of Kindergarten, she’s lost four teeth in total. Her adult teeth are crowding into the small gaps left behind. The teeth that she fiercely cut as a baby are disappearing one by one, and now, she spends much time wiggling her loose teeth to determine whether they are ready to pull out. Wiggle, creak, wiggle, creak, wiggle, creak. Eventually, she cajoles me into offering a second opinion on a tooth’s looseness.

Secularity and Secularism, Islam and Muslims: A Conversation between Daniel Martin Varisco and Hasan Azad

Hasan Azad:  Do Muslims belong in the West? This is a question that is being asked with increasing force in Euro-America. Central to the way in which this discourse is being constructed are discussions about secularism. I’m interested in exploring notions of secularity and secularism and how such ideas—as they are articulated within a Euro-American context—are imagined in opposition to Islam and to Muslims. In other words, I wonder to what extent Islam and Muslims are politicized within Euro-American discourse as a means of expressing notions of secularism and secularity. Daniel Martin Varisco:  The term “secular” has been expanded beyond […]