The Religious Studies program was thrilled to learn that Flagg Miller has been awarded a Ryskamp Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies for 09-10.

The Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships, generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in honor of Charles A. Ryskamp, literary scholar, distinguished library and museum director, and long-serving trustee of the Foundation, support advanced assistant professors and un-tenured associate professors in the humanities and related social sciences whose scholarly contributions have advanced their fields and who have well-designed and carefully developed plans for new research.

During his fellowship Professor Miller will be writing a book about a collection of over fifteen-hundred audiotapes that were acquired by Cable News Networks from Osama Bin Laden’s former house in Qandahar, Afghanistan. His book traces the kinds of interpretive steps made by speakers in the tape collection to channel legal discourses toward a more disparate and accessible range of ethical frameworks than has commonly been available to Muslim activists. Chapters on martyrdom, theology, poetry, play, and audiotapes treat readers to translations of selected recordings accompanied by a discussion of interpretive tools that allow speakers to tap into, but also diverge, from established fields of legality.