About

Old Roads Blog has been maintained since February 2006 by Martyn Smith, assistant professor of religious studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. My main research focus is Islam and specifically Islam in medieval Cairo. More generally I am interested in the process of meaning creation in all its diversity. Human beings inhabit meaningful and intricate worlds, which are the product of our many cultures. Through the interpretive tool of the blog-essay I try to uncover patterns of meaning creation.

“Old Roads”
The name Old Roads came from Jeremiah 6.16:

Stand at the crossroads, and look,
and ask for the old roads,
where the good way lies; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.

It seems to us that there are two ways of thinking about that call to ask for the old roads. One would be to find balm in a nostalgic version of the virtuous past, and that is perhaps closest to Jeremiah’s intent. But there is also the possibility of looking to old roads that have nothing to do with nostalgia, that serve to get us off the common, well-trodden perceptual roads. These barely traceable old roads, sometimes almost lost, sometimes just ignored, are those we seek to promote on Old Roads Blog.

“Interpretations”
This is not a news-breaking site. I’m not much interested in commenting on the latest events, except insofar as they illustrate my theoretical concerns. It is an untimely site, one might say, and we follow no trends. What we present are interpretations of various texts, whether these be human designed cityscapes, written books, or contemporary songs. As Clifford Geertz notes in his essay “Thick Description”:

…the essay, whether of thirty pages or three hundred, has seemed the natural genre in which to present cultural interpretations and the theories sustaining them, and why, if one looks for systematic treatises in the field, one is so soon disappointed, the more so if one finds any.

The blog-essay does not reach 30 pages, and it is a form that Geertz could not have been thinking about in 1973, but it is perfect for constant interpretation. The blog-essay begins to change academic work into a lifestyle.. a habit of perceiving. The possibilities are just beginning to come into sight.

“Texts”
One characteristic of Old Roads Blog is that it covers a lot of territory in terms of genres, time, and geography. This keeps the blog from having a strong niche—which I recognize as a weakness on the Web. I think of this as a project that will make sense in the long run, when seen with the perspective of a number of years. But for now, what are the themes a reader will discover on this blog? Here are what I see as the major themes:

• Cairo & Islam
• the nature of religion
• popular music & children’s literature
• documentaries & international films
• technology & education
• local experiences in Wisconsin

Note my book, which you might ask your library to order!