Full disclosure: I love Twitter. But, unfortunately, the social media platform hasn’t caught on as much amongst religious studies scholars as it has in other fields. For example, there is an entire #twitterstorians hashtag devoted to historians on twitter. To be sure, there are many religious studies scholars on Twitter and more and more joining all the time. But I don’t see the field as a whole taking advantage of the possibilities of twitter. So, for this session I’d like to discuss how and why folks are using Twitter as religious studies scholars now and brainstorm how we might use it in the future. Tied up in this, following the Salaita affair, are questions of when private life and academic persona begin and end and issues of academic freedom. Do we need a #twitterstorians equivalent? How could the AAR be more proactive in its use of social media? What should be the best practices for Twitter use by faculty? How might departments use Twitter? What about using it in the classroom? Or could we improve the way it’s used at the annual meeting (and avoid the ridiculous hashtag debacles of years past)?

If folks are game, I’d also like to turn the discussion into a chance to draft some concrete documents. Perhaps a proposal of best practices for using Twitter at the Annual Meeting or recommendations for how departments or faculty should use Twitter.