Notes on class interviews with Mark Juergensmeyer and R. Scott Appleby

Scheduling

We have tentatively scheduled two interviews:

• Juergensmeyer during class on Wednesday, Oct. 15 (this is the first class after fall break)
• Appleby on Wed., Oct. 8 -- which is coming up very soon! I'm actually going to try to postpone this slightly, but that might be the time we're stuck with. Update: I don't think this can be changed. Update #2: It's going to be next Wednesday, the 8th.

Developing interview questions

Ideally, I'd like the process of developing interview questions to be directed mainly by you, the students. To that end, here's how I'd like it to work. First, everybody posts at least one substantive question for each author.

• Post your questions for Juergensmeyer here
• Post your questions for Appleby here

Once everyone has posted something, I want us to try, as a group, to boil the questions down to four or five main ones. Sound reasonable?

Please feel free to add your comments, ideas, or reactions to this page. Just remember that if you add something to this page, you should include your name (or initials or something) so everyone else knows who posted it. To edit this page (or any other page), you simply press "edit" above, supply the password when asked (it's "gobears," all one word, all lower case, no quotation marks), enter your text, and press "save."

Resources

A few things you might want to look at as you think over possible questions:

• Mark Juergensmeyer's personal website, including links to a number of articles he's written about current events (it might be interesting, for example, to ask him his view of the war in Iraq) - link
• Video and audio of a discussion forum featuring Appleby (note: I haven't watched this one myself yet) at public TV station WBGH - link
• Interview with Appleby from 2005 about his work with the Kroc Institute - site has audio and transcript - link

There's a lot more out there. If you find something else relevant, feel free to post it here too.