“About This Blog"

I've created an "About This Blog" page here (along with a page for my CV here). Here's what you'll find there:

My name is Brad East, and I am a theologian, professor, and writer. As of fall 2017 I will be Assistant Professor of Theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University. I will walk in December with my PhD in Theology from Yale University, having earned my Master's of Divinity from Emory University in 2011 and my Bachelor's from Abilene Christian in 2007. For more academic credentials, see my CV.

I've been blogging on and off since summer 2006. I began to blog in earnest when I entered my Master's studies in Atlanta in 2008, a practice that continued through my course work in New Haven, but tailed off after that.

Why pick it up now? And what do I want this blog to be?

I'm one of the lucky ones in the academy, getting a great job offer right out of doctoral studies. My blogging had decreased to almost nil in the meantime not only because of increased demands on my time, not only because I was beginning to publish in scholarly outlets, but also because, well, the kind of "writing in public" that blogging is—brainstorming, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, more transparent, less professional—did not recommend itself to an applicant on the academic job market. And I simply did not want to be an unemployed blogger not yet "officially" in the field. That's not a knock on those who fit that description, only to say that it wasn't for me.

But now that this new chapter is upon me, it seemed like a good time to re-enter this part of my life, and this part of the internet. Using a blog to spitball, share thoughts, respond to pieces online (appreciatively as well as critically), create contacts, mark down ideas for later—so on and so forth—is both ideal for my intellectual temperament and useful for my writing habits. My new job is going to take over my academic publishing for a while, and I don't want my writerly muscles to atrophy in the process.

So what is this blog about? What will it be? The dumping ground for my thoughts about theology, the academy, literature, politics, pop culture, the NBA, and much more besides. The blogs I most admire and read most often are those—like Alan Jacob's, Richard Beck's, Peter Leithart's, Derek Rishmawy's, Ben Myers's, Freddie deBoer's, Timothy Burke's—that are intellectually curious, even promiscuous; willing to hazard a half-baked idea in the service of a helpful connection or new idea; value breadth and depth in equal measure; avoid polemic as much as possible, and even in the briefest of posts say something of substance; stay breast of current events and commentary without becoming beholden to it, much less gripped by chronological snobbery; are conversant with pop culture without falling for the notion either that it is more substantive than it is or that it is the unifying theory of everything for our society today; etc.

That's what I aspire to. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.