This is Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing. I'm Rachel Gordon. Here, we aim to make the process of writing and publishing a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming. Through conversations with editors and academics at all stages, from full professors to graduate students, independent scholars, and postdocs, We share stories, lessons, and helpful habits from our writing lives. We're delighted to get to speak with Andrea Jane, who is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University and the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. She's also the author of Selling Yoga from Counterculture to Pop Culture and Peace, Love, Yoga, the Politics of Global Spirituality. Her areas of research include religion and capitalism, global spirituality and modern yoga, gender, sexuality and religion, and theories of religion. 
I wanted to speak with Andrea today because of her position as editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, just because this seems like a huge editorial position. And I know some of our listeners may be wondering – How does one get to be that? And as I mentioned to Andrea in our emailing, why does one want to be that? In other words, why did this seem like a good use of your time? What has it been like for you? What have you learned through it? So maybe we can start with how you came to be editor of JAR, as it's known. Yeah. So I became the editor of the JAR in 2017. And at that time, I was asked to apply for 
Because somebody had recommended me and to this day, I'm not sure who recommended me for the job. But I was asked to apply and I thought it sounded like a great fit for me because I've always had a real commitment to serving the Guild, the American Academy of Religion. It's been a huge asset to me in my career, that professional organization, attending the regional meetings and the annual events. meeting and networking and presenting and meeting with editors and being able to present my work and refine my work. So I thought of being the editor of The Jar as an opportunity to further serve the Guild and the field, but also to be able to curate a conversation because I see editorial work as really curatorial. 
And I'm really... invested in the directions our field is going in. And I, you know, I take seriously the kind of role of curating the conversation that's kind of helping to guide us into various directions. And so it seemed like an opportunity to help, you know, I mean, the jar is certainly not the only influence on these kind of broad directions of the field, but it's one of them. So it was an opportunity for me to be a part of that. And it was an opportunity to read a lot in a vast range of subjects in our field. And that was really exciting to me. So you don't know who recommended you at the start, but what do you think they were thinking of in terms of your past experience that made you seem like a good fit for this? 
Well... I could only speculate that they were probably thinking about my involvement with the AAR and my knowledge of a lot of people and familiarity with a lot of people across subfields through my work at the AAR. So the JAR is a very broad journal. We get submissions in every area in the study of religion. And so I did have quite a large network even back then across various subfields, and I was able to kind of engage with and think with colleagues who didn't necessarily work in my mediate area. So my best bet would be that that was kind of the motivation for recommending me that I was somebody who was thinking with and engaging with colleagues across subfields. But that's just speculation. 
And to become the journal editor for The Jar, there is a search process. So I had to... you know, then apply and then go through a sort of search process, not too unlike what an academic search process is like. You do kind of a series of interviews and such. Interesting. If our listeners are thinking that's something they might want to do in their future, what do you recommend they do to prepare themselves or make themselves seem like a good candidate? Yeah, there's a lot of things you can do to prepare for editorial work. One of the things you can do is serve on editorial boards. And that's something that I had done as well. I was on the board and still on the board of Nova Religio, which is a great journal, publishes really exciting stuff and one of the first journals I was published in. 
And being on an editorial board can give you a lot of experience serving in the role of reviewer or advisor to the editors. And you can also get experience by publishing in academic journals. A lot of my knowledge of how journal publishing works was through publishing in academic journals, including the JAR. That brings me to a question about articles at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. What makes for a good JAR article when a scholar is thinking about submitting an article there and they might have some other religion journals in mind? What kinds of things would make them think actually the JAR is the right place or it's not? What should we have in mind about what makes a good research essay for your journal? 
The JAR publishes, like I said, in every subfield. But because we have so many specialized journals now, we try more and more to publish articles that speak beyond their immediate subfield or specialization. So that doesn't mean it can't be still pretty specialized. But I'm looking for some kind of intervention. in terms of theory or method that would be applicable or of use to people in other subfields. So, you know, you're adopting a new theoretical intervention or methodological approach to this particular text or community or phenomenon. And then that's something that could be of interest beyond that immediate subfield. And so, yeah, I'm looking for, you know, I usually frame it in terms of some kind of intervention in an ongoing going conversation in the field that is of interest beyond one's specialized area. 
And has your work editing affected your own writing, do you think? Oh yeah, it affects my writing all the time. I think that reading and especially reading with an editorial eye where you're really attuned to detail makes you a better writer. I would say in two ways. Number one, just stylistically. I found that I'm learning, all the time to write better just by, you know, the authors I'm reading, modeling for me what good writing looks like and what bad, bad writing looks like too. So I'm, I'm learning from a stylistic perspective, how to be a better writer, how to be a more accessible writer as well, because again, I'm working at the jar where we receive a lot of submissions in areas that I'm not a specialist in, but I still have to kind of get the gist of it. 
I have to be able to understand what I'm reading. And so I'm becoming better and better at identifying what is clear writing and what is not. And then the other way is in terms of content. I'm constantly working on editing an article and pausing to make notes to myself because I've come across something that I think could help me make the argument I want to make in my own work. a resource, a conversation I was unaware was happening that I should be engaging with or responding to. So yeah, in terms of style and content, I find that my editorial work definitely improves my own research and writing. Yeah, I've noticed that too, even just reading my colleagues' work. It's very helpful for the reasons you're mentioning, what they model and the scholarship that they're pointing me towards that I hadn't known about before. 
Also wondering about how your work as an editor, how that fits into your day, your other responsibilities as a professor, your own research. Is this an everyday kind of job being the editor of the JAR or how does it work in your schedule? Well, I will say that I have a certain amount of privilege as the editor of the JAR. Because it's such a huge established journal, we do have a budget for course releases and So that helps tremendously. I could not do the work of JAR editor without course releases. And a lot of editors don't have that privilege because they're smaller journals and they don't have the funding. So the work of being editor of the JAR affects me very differently than the work of being an editor of a lot of other journals affects them. 
I'm able to do less teaching and focus on the JAR. And then the jar work is absolutely daily. I would say that it, you know, I kind of joke that my research is like 50% of what I do professionally. My journal work is 50% of what I do professionally. And then the teaching and the other service get like squeezed in somewhere somehow. Being the editor of the jar, we get hundreds of submissions every year. And I don't necessarily take a close look at all of them because Some of those submissions are just real obviously immediately not appropriate for the journal, and I can make a pretty quick desk decision on them. But anything that is published in the jar, anything that makes it to publication, I have read every word. 
And that goes for the journal articles and the book reviews, even though we have a separate book review editor. Because I think of the jar as one cohesive whole, I like to read every word and make sure that everything follows our style guidelines as they should. And, and so that I can get a good sense of the trends of what we're publishing and what we're not. So that's, that's a lot of pages every year that I'm reading and editing very closely. So yeah, I spend time every single day, every workday, at least on the jar. And it's amazing to me that you're, you're able to keep up still so much of your own research, as you described through the breakdown of your In a way, I wonder if the journal sort of feeds your excitement to continue your research just because you're seeing other people produce great scholarship and maybe that's a constant inspiration for your own. 
Yeah, I think it is. I definitely get energized by the editorial work. I think I do, like some people get energized by the classroom. I'm not, I don't think of myself as a phenomenal teacher. I enjoy teaching classes. I get a certain amount of energy out of it. But the way my colleagues talk about teaching, some of my colleagues who are just really, really good at it and just put an enormous amount of thought and effort into designing their courses and coming up with new pedagogical approaches, I just can't relate to that. But when I talk about the editorial work to those same colleagues, they oftentimes can't really relate to that on the flip side. So for me, the editorial work is very energizing. 
And I'm thinking all the time about how the journal could be better, how we could be attracting more submissions and better submissions, how we could be highlighting what I consider to be important conversations in the field and important directions in the field. And I just definitely take away from that, you know, a certain amount of energy that then I get to put to use in my own research and writing. Yeah. I'm curious, too. I mean, you're the editor of this really prestigious academic journal. Is writing for the public beyond the academy, especially given that your subjects, your areas of research are, I think, so interesting to non-academics, too? Are you also interested in this more, I guess we use a bunch of adjectives to describe it, but accessible or public scholarship? 
Is that something that is important to you or that you have time for? Well, I think that for me... Making my personal writing accessible is important to me because there's a certain, you know, element of the elitism of academic culture that I'm uncomfortable with. I teach at a public institution, an urban campus. I'm on the Indianapolis campus of Indiana University. And I love that. I love that when I go to the university, I'm not stepping onto a college campus or where everybody looks the same or comes from a similar socioeconomic background, or there's a whole lot of privilege and a lack of perspective. I really enjoy working with a vast range of students from all different backgrounds. And I feel like that kind of resistance to elitism comes through also in my writing and my desire to make my writing accessible and to speak to topics that are important to people. 
beyond my scholarly community and so with the journal editing too I definitely read for clarity and accessibility though I also honor individual authors place in that because we do publish articles in the jar that are not very accessible that are you know very much speak in an elite scholarly tone that wouldn't be accessible to a And I want to honor that in different authors. Not everybody sees themselves as speaking to the public or as necessarily accessible. And I think there's value in a lot of different types of scholarship. So the jar doesn't have to be all that, even if I think it's important and I want at least some of it to be accessible. Yeah. You mentioned before your own interest in editorial and how this is sort of where some of your passions as a scholar are. 
I wonder if you could... Give us an idea of how you would advise if an earlier stage in their career scholar was in your office and saying, I'm thinking about an editorial position in my future. What would you be telling them? Consider if you are a person who likes this or feels you do these things well or wants to be doing more of these things, what are the things you would tell us to consider? Well, I think first I'd say that you can't really plan your career around it. I just... I never planned to be the editor of the JAR. I kind of fell into it. And to be honest with you, kind of funny story, when somebody from the search committee for the JAR editor reached out to me and asked me to apply, for about a week or so, I had it in my head that they had asked me to apply to be an associate editor. 
not the editor, because it just hadn't occurred to me that, you know, I'd ever be the editor of the jar. It was never part of my plan. And I just kind of had misread them. I thought they were saying, you know, could you, would you be, would you consider serving as an associate editor for the journal? It's just one of like, there are very few editors. It's not for academic journals. You know, it's not what a lot of people end up doing as a part of their academic career. So first, I'd say that, that you can't really plan for it. You can consider it something that you'd like to do at some point, and there's certain steps you could take to make it more likely. 
But some of it just kind of comes down to being at the right place at the right time. And otherwise, though, I think, again, serving on editorial boards would be an important way to get started. Not necessarily many, but one or two for a journal that's of particular importance to you. And then being in conversation about the editor of that journal or journals about what their plans are in terms of when they plan to resign and how the search process goes for a new editor. It's different for every journal. And being ready to put one's name forward as a potential editor. In terms of experience, the best experience you can get for being an editor is reviewing. We couldn't do our work as editors without the reviewers. 
And they do... a lot of the heavy lifting and a lot of the important decision making. Because I think a good editor trusts their reviewers. They take time to find qualified reviewers and then they trust their opinions. So it's a really important role. And I would encourage anyone when they're thinking that they might want to do editorial work to do the work of a reviewer because it gives them a sense of what the editorial work is going to entail. And it also gives them skills for being an editor. And it gives them an insight into the editorial process, which if they're ever interviewed for an editorial position, they're able to speak to. I understand what the process looks like. Here's my approach. I remember in my interview for JAR Editor, one of the things I talked about was my sort of editorial approach to a journal article. 
And I could only articulate that because I had been a reviewer for so many years. What is your editorial approach? I generally take a submission, you know, I first read the abstract and then look at the reference section so I know who the author is in conversation with. Then I do a quick skim and then I do a really close read. And it's during only the close read that I'm actually making any changes or suggesting any changes. Since our goal here is to make things more transparent. I wanted to follow up with one of your suggestions, which was serving on editorial boards. Listeners may wonder, how does it come about that someone gets to be on an editorial board? Well, in most cases, people aren't volunteering themselves for academic service. 
So in most cases, editors have to seek out colleagues to serve on their boards. So I do this every year. I look over the board and I see where we have certain areas that are underrepresented and we need more people. Let's say I'm getting a lot of submissions on the Black Church, but I don't have anyone on my board who specializes in the Black Church. Well, that year I'm going to go out and invite a few people who are working on the Black Church. In most cases, that's the way people come to the editorial board. But I also have people come to me at the meeting of the AAR through email and say, hey, I think the journal is important. I like what you're doing with the journal because the jar is not one thing. 
The jar looks different under different editors. And so I'll have people say, I like what you're doing with the journal and I'd like to serve on the editorial board and be a part of that. And in a lot of cases, I'm excited that somebody is volunteering their service and happy to add them to the board. That's actually really good to know that people can step forward that way. Yeah, absolutely. I would recommend if you're interested in editorial work, think about the journals you're reading and approach those editors and say, I read a lot in your journal and I'd like to be on the board. I mean, just the fact that you're reading the journal, That's a good reason to serve on the board because it means that's the kind of stuff you're engaging with professionally in your own writing. 
So those are the conversations you're already in. So why not be on the board and do that little bit of extra lifting? When we've spoken with editors from presses, we sometimes talk to them about new trends in academic publishing. I don't know if that's something that an editor of an academic journal can speak to, but are you noticing, oh, articles are really moving towards publishing? more of this or less of that? Are you aware of any trends like that that might be interesting for listeners to hear about? I suppose there's a couple of different trends for sure I could speak to. Of course, it's always changing, but ones I would say I currently am kind of attuned to and thinking a lot about and feel are most pressing. 
One is an increasing shift in the the humanities at large, but also religious studies more specifically, is thinking about planetary crisis. More and more, I'm seeing submissions that engage with themes around planetary crisis. You know, what does it mean for our field that we're writing in a time of planetary crisis? What does it mean theoretically and methodologically? Who do we need to be engaging with who we may not have been engaging with before? For example, environmentalists. or experts at disease and the spread of disease, like epidemiology in the wake of COVID-19, people working in animal ethics, or we're seeing a lot of engagement in other fields related to environmental studies, animal ethics, or issues around planetary crisis or disease. And so I think that's 
really critical for our field. It's important. We're seeing the growth of the environmental humanities generally, but we're also seeing it in the field of religious studies. And I'm always excited to see submissions in those areas. We're also seeing an increase of submissions in what I call disciplinary reflexivity. So articles that are reflecting on the state of the field and addressing issues around the politics of the field. And we actually have a separate section in the jar that we publish these articles in, it's called discussing the discipline. So I'm encouraging all the time more submissions that ask about, you know, why the field looks the way it is. So why have we not until more recently been asking more about the environment, right questions about the environment? 
And then why is that growing now? And so, you know, articles that basically reflect on, on the field, the state of the field and changes in the field and why those are happening. Those articles in disciplinary reflexivity I think are particularly important right now, especially as a lot of universities are being reorganized. We're losing a lot of departments and we need to reflect on who we are entity-wise and why we exist, why we've changed, why we need to change further, why we need to continue to exist if we can make that case. So yeah, I would say these are you know, just two examples of important trends I'm seeing. Great. There's something specific I wanted to ask you that we've gotten as a question from listeners. 
This is about when you get the reader's reports and you are responding to them and you're including a letter about your response. And people have wondered, do I need to actually address every point? Is there sort of a percentage that feels right to the editor that, okay, he's he seems willing to do about 75%. And so it's okay that in the letter, he's then saying, actually, for this 25%, I'm not comfortable for these reasons and making those changes. What's your sense of what's the right way to go about that or what to consider in terms of how much you're willing to take on those changes? Yeah, I do not think there's a particular percentage per se, because it really depends on the situation and the case that the author can make for 
for whether or not they're gonna make certain changes. But what I do recommend to authors is that if you decide not to make a particular change that was recommended, then make a case for it. If you can make a strong case for not making 75% of the changes a reviewer recommended, then as the editor, I'm gonna consider that because you might be able to make a strong case. So it really depends on the individual submission and author and the reviewer's suggestions. But I do recommend that authors do take the time to write a response to the reviewers' reports and explain as extensively as they can why they chose to make certain changes and not others. And is that letter going to the reviewers as well as the editors? 
In the case of The Jar, it is. So I do share the response to the reviewers with the reviewers. Okay. I love it when authors separate out their response to the different reviewers. So response to reviewer one, response to reviewer two. And then I'll only share with the relevant reviewer the response. But yeah, I think it's important for the reviewer too, especially in the cases when that same reviewer is taking a second or third look. It's important for them to know what the author was thinking when deciding what changes to make and what changes not to make. And it will affect the how their next round of review, you know, comes to take shape. Sometimes academics feel like these readers' reports are not always delivered in as kind a tone as they would like. 
You know, I don't know that this ever happens at the JAR. I have not heard of examples, but I'm speaking more generally about academics' experience with readers' reports. I'm curious if you have ever come across readers' reports that you feel like, it feels like this is not being expressed in the kindest tone or it's unnecessarily perhaps even mean, is that somehow taken into consideration? Yeah, sure. I think I get so many different kinds of reviewer reports. And in some cases, they really are inadequate. For example, sometimes I just don't get enough. Sometimes a reviewer will agree to review something and they send me maybe one paragraph which is usually not enough to assess the quality of an academic article. But also sometimes the tone can be inappropriate. 
So I've gotten review reports where it felt like the reviewer intuited the gender of the author, and then that affected the tone of the review. And there's been times when I've then come back to the reviewer and said, you know, I noticed this. I wonder if you might consider rewriting the review in a different way, given that. Or reviewers can be very defensive if they feel like their position is under attack. And in that case, I might go ahead and send it along to the author. But with the caveat that, hey, I understand that this reviewer is obviously coming from a defensive position, but they're not the only report, right? We always get at least two reports. So, you know, I'll keep that in mind as you decide. 
your response. And I'm certainly not going to make a decision just because the reviewer says you shouldn't publish it because they disagreed with me. You know, to some extent you have to trust the editor to be able to kind of pick up on these things. Right. And I know so many colleagues have mentioned they've appreciated it when an editor has made it clear that they've, they've picked up on some of that tone in a report and have it in mind. And, There's a couple of questions that we ask all guests. And one is, if there's anything you wish you had known earlier about writing or publishing in your academic career, you know, and for you, this might be very informed by your editorial work, things that you're, it might even be things that you realize other academics would be helped by knowing earlier. 
Yeah. So things I wish I knew about writing? About writing or publishing, since we are, in this podcast, we're pretty focused on academic writing and publishing. I think that what I would share is that you should not hesitate to reach out to editors. I think that a lot of people are hesitant to write to editors just out of the blue and say, hey, I have this idea. What do you think? Could this be a good fit for your journal? Or in terms of book publishers as well, could this be a good fit for your publisher? It's a book project. I think that authors are generally way too hesitant. And I always recommend young or early career scholars, when they're hesitating, go ahead and submit. 
Or when they're hesitating, go ahead and write to the editor. Because... You have very little to lose, right? I mean, what does it take to draft a quick email? You probably already have drafted an abstract or you could very easily include that in the content of an email. And, you know, what do you have to gain? Well, an editor might write back and say, oh, no, no, no, you should submit this to this other journal instead. And that saved you a lot of time because the reviewer process is very long in most cases, right? And if you don't hear back, you just lost the time of writing an email. So I recommend that people talk to editors. I also recommend that people talk to authors who have worked with certain editors. 
And this is even easier. You know, go to conferences and talk to your colleagues and say, hey, you published with Oxford. What was that process like? How did you get a hold of Theo? Or how did you get a hold of Cynthia? Where did the conversation start and how? And ask in the case of book publishing, ask your colleagues to share book proposals with you, especially colleagues who have published with the publisher you want to publish with. Ask them to send you their book proposal so you have a template and you know this book proposal worked with this particular publisher. So I think that kind of conversation about publishing, that's the key. You need to be in conversation. Don't assume you know how to do it because this isn't something we learn in grad school. 
This isn't a course we'll ever take. You need to learn by speaking to editors and by authors who are successful. Yeah, I think that's great advice. I have a friend who I think sort of does that type of thing of reaching out to editors even before journal articles that she's submitting. And that just seemed like, wow, I'd never thought of that. And why not? And of course, we couldn't agree more with you. This is sort of the aim of the podcast to educate have these conversations because most of us were not taught about all of these processes and systems around writing and publishing. The other question we wanted to ask you was if there is a writing practice or habit that has been working for you recently? 
Oh, that's a good question. I've never been a writer who collaborates much, so I don't do writing groups. I'm like a solitary writer, for sure. And so I think what has worked best for me is solitude. just chiseling out even a short period of time when I have solitude, which for me is very difficult because I am a journal editor. So the emails are constantly coming in. And I teach and I have other professional duties. And I have two children, one with disabilities. And so the phone calls and emails and text messages for him are constantly coming in. And I So the most important thing for me is finding solitude. And if I can find that for even two hours or even one hour and actually tune out from the email and the phone, that's when I get productive writing done in an empty house, even away from my colleagues. 
So for me, that means not writing on campus because finding solitude on campus is really hard when students and colleagues are coming by and wanting to chat. So for me, it's about finding solitude at home. I'm sure it'll be good for listeners to hear not everyone is a writing group person and that they're those who get most out of the solitude. I'm curious just to follow up on that. So many of our guests have said it's been important to get some kind of validation or feedback or sort of something that encourages them externally. Is there a point in your writing when you like to show it or do you need some kind of external check-in about it? Oh, sure. I do share a lot of my writing at various stages. 
So I used to do a lot more public scholarship, and I'm not making time for that these days. But I used to write for things like for outlets like The Conversation and Religion Dispatches, The Eminent Frame. These kinds of places, I think, are great to submit early drafts that will develop into a book chapter or into a journal article. So for people who want to get their stuff out, that's one thing to think about are these online outlets where you can publish and reach a pretty broad audience without having drawn up an entire journal article or book chapter. And then otherwise, conferences, giving conference papers is great. It's very generative in a lot of cases. So if you can attend conferences and deliver early drafts there, that's great. 
And then another thing, I'm lucky enough to be invited to give talks, do invited talks. And more and more, that's become a space where I experiment with new material. And it kind of also gives me a deadline, right? Whether you have a conference or you're writing a piece of public scholarship or you're delivering a public talk, you have a deadline. And that helps you. I mean, it helps me, you know, actually turn stuff out. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Andrea. I really appreciate your taking the time. Just wanted to check if there's anything else you want to add that you feel would be helpful for our listeners to hear about editing, about balancing or fitting that into a professor's job or your writing life as an academic in general. 
One piece of advice that I haven't shared yet is is finding, you know, one of the questions I get a lot when I do sessions at conferences or universities I'm visiting on how to get published. One of the questions I get a lot is how do I know where to submit? And this goes again, it's a really important question, both for book publishing and for journal publishing. It's really, you know, there's not like a clear guidelines on where you should submit. And so I always recommend that authors look at who they're reading. And I was reading, really lucky to be able to publish my books with Oxford and to be able to publish one of my first journal articles with the jar and with Nova Religio. 
And in all, in all those cases, when I decided where to submit, whether it was Oxford, the jar or Nova, I pulled stuff off my shelves, the stuff I was reading and looked at where the authors I was reading and engaging with were publishing and And that helped me to decide. And it worked. It worked really well for me. So I recommend that to people wondering, where should I submit? And then the other piece of advice I've been giving out a lot lately is just a general professional advice. You asked about balance. I just recommend taking more time off. I think we academics can be very critical of the neoliberal governance we're all living under that says that we... Our worth is in our productivity. 
But we also succumb to it, right? So even, you know, we're aware of it. We tend to be critical of it. Yet we succumb to it so easily thinking we have to work, work, work all the time and not have clear boundaries. When I was a younger scholar, I would get up to nurse my babies in the middle of the night and while nursing, check my email and like reply to emails. And... I just don't do that kind of stuff anymore. I learned that it's not good to not have time off and we need rest and it makes us better thinkers. It makes us much better thinkers to take time with our friends, with our family, with the things that bring us pleasure, good food or walks in the park, whatever it is. 
It makes us better thinkers. So I've been telling people to take more time off. That is great advice. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Writing It, the podcast about academics and writing, sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. Visit our podcast description to find out how to contact us and send us your questions about academic writing and publishing. Follow us on social media at writingitpod and subscribe to us so you never miss an episode.