Digging Wells While Houses Burn: Academic Responsibility and the Study of Religion
In a provocative article titled Digging Wells While Houses Burn (2006), David Gordon White argues that certain studies of religion actively stoke supremacist ideologies and politics. The only way to avoid this unsavoury collaboration is to rethink the way we do our work — the stories we choose to tell, and the methods we use to tell them. According to White, academics of religion who fail to engage with this responsibility are “digging wells while houses burn”, ignoring devastating realities that urgently demand their attention. In this context, we invite scholars of all religions, across all disciplines, to reflect on the relationship between their academic work, on the one hand, and violence and supremacy, on the other.
updated: 2025-12-19 deadline: 2026-03-01 event_date: “April 23-24, 2026” location: “Cambridge, UK” organization: “Namrata Narula (University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies)” learn more