Introduction

A möbius strip has no end, it just keeps going and going, but it does change and so does TheStrip. TheStrip, as a community of scholars, will soon have attained a stage of completion with all involved now gainfully employed, on their way to graduate school, traveling, or about to do something really significant when they can figure out what that is. TheStrip, as an online journal, will remain a statement of the accomplishments and more importantly the spirit and aspiration of all those who have been part of the community.

Almost three years ago, in the Spring 1996, a group of graduate students approached Sam Gill eager to explore ways of engaging discourse that extended beyond the traditional conventions. The group began writing experimental papers, distributing them among themselves, and meeting frequently to discuss and critique this work. They met voluntarily through the summer spurred on by the excitement of the work they were doing, the ideas they held in common, the style of personal engagement. They found themselves eager to share the results of their work and wondered about publishing a collection of these essays. They realized that this would be cost prohibitive, due to the innovative uses of text, even if, as a group of graduate students, they could find an interested publisher. The idea arose that not only could these innovations be accomplished on the Internet, but also that this medium offered much greater possibilities (possibilities they then couldn't imagine). During the Fall of 1996 the group met weekly to develop a plan for a graduate course to explore these ideas and to found the journal TheStrip. The faculty approved the course and the group set to work.

Only Henrik Boes, among this group, had any experience or knowledge of computer technology. We began to read anything and everything we could find on computer technology and its social and cultural implications, hypertext theory, and so on. We also found ourselves reading in a different exciting way critical theory, text theory, literary theory, and much more. We dabbled with computer software not having a clue what we were doing. As each of us, spending hours trying to accomplish the simplest tasks would gain a breakthrough, we'd call one another to share the news. We aimed for the end of the Spring '97 term to go "live." The last several weeks were for many involved all nighters more often that sane and healthy. But the site went up and it had features, culture pieces, biographies, and plans for much more. And the course was regularized as "Religion and the Internet" offered every term up to the present.

Since that time much has been accomplished:

• more than half of religion graduate students (18 total we think) have been involved in the project
• almost all students in the group have been involved for three or four semesters receiving a maximum of only three hours credit; the average weekly time commitment per student has most certainly exceeded 20 hours for the entire time each has been involved and this was entirely volunteer
• members of TheStrip community published an article in the "Bulletin of the Council for the Societies for the Study of Religion"
• other articles were drafted and submitted (unsuccessfully) for publication
• numerous student course papers were done using multimedia and Internet technology and are located on TheStrip
• a number of the student "profiles" done for "Approaches" have been placed on the site
• TheStrip has become a rich, complex, extensive Internet site
• several members of the group did a presentation at the 1998 AAR in Orlando that was well received (when Bobby Schnabel, the ATLAS Director, saw the presentation he remarked that what we are doing is what the Media and the Arts area of ATLAS is aspiring to)
• we feel that TheStrip is the most advanced online journal at CU; the most sophisticated Internet site related to the Academic Study of Religion; most certainly one of the most exciting graduate student projects anywhere
• two members of the group were the first two and the only two (so far as we know) CU graduate students to do online theses
• Henrik Boes was invited to Sweden to present his thesis (and had his way paid)
• nine members of the group have or have had jobs related to computer technology which most of them were able to get because of the training and experience they received in this group (ironically, Religion probably places a higher percentage of its graduates in computer related jobs than many of the science departments)
• the members of the group have had extensive experience writing grant applications, doing proposals for conference presentations, serving on faculty committees for ATLAS, negotiating with administrators regarding computer equipment, teaching one another, making public presentations
• perhaps most importantly the group has learned through extensive experience how to work as a group, how to motivate one another, how to criticize one another, how to meet deadlines; how to maintain an ongoing project not limited to a course or by the academic calendar
• now we're learning how to end things and how to deal with disappointment
• TheStrip has distinguished The University of Colorado at Boulder and the Religious Studies department

We are proud of what we have accomplished.

A characteristic of the möbius strip is that its outside and its inside are continuous. TheStrip as an external thing will, with a few final touches, soon be considered complete and allowed to be used or ignored in its virtual reality so long as it has any live links. But as one travels the möbius to its inner side, TheStrip will be carried to the far corners by those who have been a part of it, for we have all been profoundly changed by the experiences we have shared. TheStrip, in some important sense, has become us, those of us who have done it and been it. For the sake of proper closure we have invited all those who have been a part of this vital community to express what it has meant to her or him personally.

These statements are our final contributions.

Boulder, Colorado. February 1999.