Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-298) and index.

Introduction: TEXTureS, gestures, power: orientation to radical excavation / Vincent L. Wimbush -- Scriptures: text and then some / Catherine Bell -- Signifying revelation in Islam / Tazim R. Kassam -- Scriptures and the nature of authority: the case of the Guru Granth in Sikh tradition / Gurinder Singh Mann -- Dynamics of scripturalization: the ancient Near East / Hugh R. Page Jr. -- Known knowns and unknown unknowns: scriptures and scriptural interpretations / R.S. Sugirtharajah -- Talking back -- Signifying scriptures in Confucianism / Yan Shoucheng -- Confessions of Nat Turner: memoir of a martyr or testament of a terrorist? / William L. Andrews -- Signifying scriptures from an African perspective / Oyeronke Olajubu -- Transforming identities, de-textualizing interpretation, and re-modalizing representation: scriptures and subaltern subjectivity in India / Sathianathan Clarke -- Signification as scripturalization: communal memories among the Miao and in ancient Jewish allegorization / Sze-kar Wan -- Talking back -- Conjuring scriptures and engendering healing traditions / Yvonne P. Chireau -- Visualizing scriptures / Colleen McDannell -- Signifying in nineteenth-century African American religious music / Jacqueline Cogdell Djedje -- Signifying proverbs: Menace II society / Erin Runions -- Scriptures beyond script: some African diasporic occasions / Grey Gundaker -- Texture, text, and testament: reading sacred symbols/signifying imagery in American visual culture / Leslie King-Hammond -- Talking back -- Differences at play in the fields of the lord / Susan F. Harding -- American Samson: biblical reading and national origins / Laura E. Donaldson -- Against signifying: psychosocial needs and natural evil / Leonard Harris -- Orality, memory, and power: Vedic scriptures and Brahmanical hegemony in India / Patrick Olivelle -- Reading places/reading scriptures / Wesley A. Kort -- Taniwha and serpent: a trans-Tasman riff / Jo Diamond -- Scriptures without letters, subversions of pictography, signifyin(g) alphabetical writing / Jos�e Rabasa -- Talking back -- In Hoc Signum Vincent: a Midrashist replies / Burton L. Visotzky -- Powerful words: the social-intellectual location of the international signifying scriptures project / Elisabeth Sch�ussler Fiorenza -- Racial and colonial politics of the modern object of knowledge: cautionary notes on "scripture" / Joseph Parker -- Who needs the subaltern? / Ranu Samantrai -- Talking back.

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