The Latest Issue of The Yale ISM Review

May 12, 2021

We are excited to announce the publication of the latest issue of The Yale ISM Review. Centered around the theme of disasters, this edition of YISMR explores how music, the arts, ritual, and worship help us make sense of death, loss, and anguish in the midst of catastrophic events and unfolding crises such as COVID-19, migration, racial oppression, and climate change. 

Volume 6, No. 1 of YISMR was produced under the direction of guest editor Mark Roosien, a scholar of liturgy, theology, and ecology; translator of Russian religious texts; and lecturer in Liturgical Studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School. The issue features contributions by Tony Alonso, Daniel P. Castillo, Robin J. Freeman, Valarie Lee James, Ruth Langer, LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Marcia W. Mount-Shoop,  Margaret Olin, Lisa L. Thompson, and Andrew Wymer.

Roosien writes of this issue,

Even as it robs us of the words, disaster demands that we give an expression that can account for the sense of irreversible loss and, often enough, unshakeable hope. In so many ways, this kind of expression—from the depths of disaster—is sacred expression… This issue of The Yale ISM Review explores sacred expression amidst disaster. The expressions discussed in this issue, from painting to preaching, singing to praying, shine a light on disasters from the inside… These are expressions that reach out toward the infinite in grief, desperation—and hope.

Read more on The Yale ISM Review website.