The newest forum for expression and dialogue at Brown focuses on a topic that most students do not know was lacking a forum: religion. Ziggurat, a journal of religious studies, is the brainchild of Nathan Schneider '06 and Eli Braun '06, both religious studies concentrators. The idea for the journal has been in the works for several years, but it should become a reality by the end of this semester.
The catalyst for Ziggurat's launch was an article on religious life at Brown published in the New York Times in May, Schneider said. He said that he and Braun already knew there was religious life on campus, but that many students who read the article were surprised because they were not aware of that aspect of the Brown community.
The high level of enthusiasm they witnessed among students in the Religious Studies Departmental Undergraduate Group and in a seminar for religious studies concentrators also encouraged Schneider and Braun. Schneider said he hopes Ziggurat will help bridge this "divide between what is and what isn't talked about."
Ziggurat will be a forum for students interested in religion and religious studies to make their voices heard in the Brown community. Its founders want to create an "open space for students who are floating in a lot of different worlds to verbalize ... the forces that pull on them," Braun said. The hope is that it could make the religious community at Brown more visible as well as provide a place for expression of ideas about religion, he said.
University Chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson said there has not been a comparable journal on campus during her 16 years at Brown and that undergraduate publications dealing with religion are rare. "Actually the proposal is very bold - classic Brown - and bridges a space across which less brave people have been unwilling to go," she said.
There is a division, she said, between people who study religion academically and practitioners of religion. The publication's creators hope it will have credibility with both groups. "The students who are the conceivers of this are all practitioners as well," she said. They "staring right down the double-barrel (of this divide) and saying no."
Ziggurat is looking for submissions that are "spicy, controversial (and) academic, as well as non-academic," Braun said. The submissions deadline for the inaugural issue is Oct. 24, and the editors plan to publish before the end of the semester. The 14-person editorial board, made up of members of the religious studies DUG, as well as non-concentrators, will review submissions.
Financial support for the publication comes primarily from funding provided to the Religious Studies DUG, as well as part of a grant from the Ford Foundation.
The Chaplains' Office is also "expressing a financial interest," Cooper Nelson said. She added that the office is "enthusiastically supporting the independence of this journal as a student collaborative" effort and will exercise no authority, editorial or otherwise.
The publication's name, "Ziggurat," comes from the ancient Mesopotamian temples of the same name whose function remains a mystery. Schneider said the name, in addition to being a completely nondenominational symbol of religion, "sounded like religion itself" - an important part of human culture with mysterious origins and function.
