McCutcheon/"Religion" in Theory and Practice, 10. Why I Blog

With the advent of online self-publishing (i.e., blogging), the venues in which scholars can now publicize their work has opened dramatically—though not all venues are equally valued by those who govern ones career progress. This chapter, published here for the first time, reflects on the reasons why one might decide to blog—a decision that depends on a variety of factors, from ones career stage to the intended audiences one hopes to reach with ones research. Beginning by taking seriously the popular writing of no less a scholar than the French semiotician, Roland Barthes, the chapter re-evaluates the place of blogging in scholarship, recognizing that, while it is indeed different from peer reviewed publishing in articles and books, it may still be one of the more consequential places where our work appears.