"Reunited, Hey, Hey"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glC9_8Ijt9k]

Like many of you, I am informed by email that AAR will again in the future be holding its annual meetings in the same time and place that SBL holds its annual meetings.

Reached for comment, AAR would not say on the record that it has decided that SBL does not smell like cheese, eat paste, and sweat when it holds AAR’s hand crossing the street. (SBL, reached for comment, looked at its shoes and mumbled aggressively about “the kewl kids.”) Person-on-the-street interviews suggest that a reduced percentage of corduroy jackets with patched sleeves in SBL, and an increase in annual papers with “gender” in the title, may be among the relevant factors in this reunion.

In related news: AAR and SBL seen sitting at the same lunch table. Occasional brushing-together of feet probably not “footsie,” but promisingly, does not result in a masking tape dividing line on the floor.

["Reunited, Hey, Hey" was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/28. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Discussion: Trible's Tasmanian Tigers

(With its two companion posts, this is a discussion exercise for some of my students, while our course management system undergoes an untimely upgrade. Other readers may choose to chime in, but please let the students “own the space,” and remember that I’ll delete off-topic or disrespectful comments and replies. This post will only accept comments through June 20th.)

You have all completed Michael Joseph Brown’s book, What They Don’t Tell You: A Survivor’s Guide to Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2000).

In about 350 words:

In your own words, how does Brown distinguish between “Bible study” as a devotional exercise and critical, academic “biblical studies” as practiced in a class like ours?

Does academic biblical studies differ significantly from how you have read the Bible in the past? Does academic biblical studies have any similarities to any reading you have done before?

What reservations, if any, do you have about reading the Bible in the ways described by Brown? Which “Rules of Thumb” 1–12 correspond to these reservations? Conversely, which of his “Rules of Thumb” 1–12, if any, do you find especially exciting as avenues toward better understanding the Bible?

Click “Leave a Comment” below to begin writing your response. Remembering that this blog is a public space, feel free to use only your first name and last initial (for example, “Jane F.”). Please remember to come back and respond to at least three of your classmates, by clicking “Reply” below their comment.

[Discussion: Trible's Tasmanian Tigers was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/14. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Discussion: Gunkel's Gray Wolves

(With its two companion posts, this is a discussion exercise for some of my students, while our course management system undergoes an untimely upgrade. Other readers may choose to chime in, but please let the students “own the space,” and remember that I’ll delete off-topic or disrespectful comments and replies. This post will only accept comments through June 20th.)

You have all completed Michael Joseph Brown’s book, What They Don’t Tell You: A Survivor’s Guide to Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2000).

In about 350 words:

In your own words, how does Brown distinguish between “Bible study” as a devotional exercise and critical, academic “biblical studies” as practiced in a class like ours?

Does academic biblical studies differ significantly from how you have read the Bible in the past? Does academic biblical studies have any similarities to any reading you have done before?

What reservations, if any, do you have about reading the Bible in the ways described by Brown? Which “Rules of Thumb” 1–12 correspond to these reservations? Conversely, which of his “Rules of Thumb” 1–12, if any, do you find especially exciting as avenues toward better understanding the Bible?

Click “Leave a Comment” below to begin writing your response. Remembering that this blog is a public space, feel free to use only your first name and last initial (for example, “Jane F.”). Please remember to come back and respond to at least three of your classmates, by clicking “Reply” below their comment.

[Discussion: Gunkel's Gray Wolves was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/14. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Discussion: Wellhausen's Wildcats

(With its two companion posts, this is a discussion exercise for some of my students, while our course management system undergoes an untimely upgrade. Other readers may choose to chime in, but please let the students “own the space,” and remember that I’ll delete off-topic or disrespectful comments and replies. This post will only accept comments through June 20th.)

You have all completed Michael Joseph Brown’s book, What They Don’t Tell You: A Survivor’s Guide to Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2000).

In about 350 words:

In your own words, how does Brown distinguish between “Bible study” as a devotional exercise and critical, academic “biblical studies” as practiced in a class like ours?

Does academic biblical studies differ significantly from how you have read the Bible in the past? Does academic biblical studies have any similarities to any reading you have done before?

What reservations, if any, do you have about reading the Bible in the ways described by Brown? Which “Rules of Thumb” 1–12 correspond to these reservations? Conversely, which of his “Rules of Thumb” 1–12, if any, do you find especially exciting as avenues toward better understanding the Bible?

Click “Leave a Comment” below to begin writing your response. Remembering that this blog is a public space, feel free to use only your first name and last initial (for example, “Jane F.”). Please remember to come back and respond to at least three of your classmates, by clicking “Reply” below their comment.

[Discussion: Wellhausen's Wildcats was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/14. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

SBL 2010 Program Book

Mark Goodacre alerts us that the preliminary online program book is available for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. He tells us what he’s doing there (I am so totally at that second one, Mark), and invites us to do the same.

The title of my own presentation is, “To Those Far and Near”: The Case for “Community” at a Distance. I am presenting it in the session, “Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies.” The theme for this session is “A Workshop on Interactive Technologies for Teaching and Learning.”

Insert here obligatory fear-based murmblings about the current state of the project.

Who else is presenting? What other interesting things are you doing at SBL 2010?

[SBL 2010 Program Book was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/08. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Little Help? Song of Songs Resources

Can any of my readers offer some favorite resources on the Song of Songs? Critical commentaries, essays in books, journal articles, entries from Bible dictionaries/encyclopedias?

Ultimately, my interest will be in the “I am black and beautiful” bit and also the eroticism of Song of Songs. But, at this stage, I’m interested in any of your favorite high-quality critical resources on the book.

Thanks!

[Little Help? Song of Songs Resources was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/06/03. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Six Days Remain…

…of guilt-free blogging.

Blue Gal reminds me that May is National “It’s Okay If I Don’t Blog Today” Month.

Have a good day.

[Six Days Remain… was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/25. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

What I'm Reading: Eastern Religions Edition

I am trying to learn something of the history and development of eastern religions in Korea, and am somewhat hampered by my lack of preparation in the “eastern religions” part. And in the “Korea” part.

Into the fifth of six chapters in Joseph A. Adler’s Chinese Religious Traditions (Prentice Hall: 2002), I can recommend this work to other newcomers to eastern religions. The focus is on:

• Confucianism


• Daoism


• Buddhism


• “popular religion”

After introducing each of these, the presentation is diachronic, exploring the development of each religious strand in China’s stages of history. The work brings certain running characteristics of each of the “big four” into regular comparison and contrast, creating narrative pathways that help me, anyway, to meaningfully navigate the subject matter’s complexities. This ’graph, concluding a major section on Neo-Confucianism in early modern China, is an example (brackets represent material I add for clarity):

Neo-Confucian self-cultivation bears interesting resemblances to the realization of Buddhahood in Mahayana [Buddhism] and Perfection…in Daoism…. While Confucians objected to the Mahayana [Buddhist] theory of no-self of emptiness, the original Confucian claims that individuals are inherently social beings is logically very similar to the premise of the [Mahayana Buddhist] theory of no-self, namely the radical interdependence of all things. And like the aspiring Daoist zhenren (perfected person), Neo-Confucians understood self-cultivation to involve the transformation of the whole person, including the psycho-physical nature.

This sort of synthesis is typical, and I find it a great help as a novice to the material.

Personally fascinating to me is the inclusion of “popular religion,” which is essentially a synchretic set of practices whose origins precede even Confucius and whose development continues today.

Also in my hands are Daniel L. Overmyer, Religions of China (Harper and Row, 1986), and James Huntley Grayson, Korea: A Religious History (rev. ed.; RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).

I know that this subject matter is not “up the alley” of my usual readers, but if you can recommend further reading, especially on the development of eastern religions in Korea, I would be grateful.

[What I'm Reading: Eastern Religions Edition was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/24. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

A Little Help? History of Eastern Religions in Korea

I would like to find some reading on the history of eastern religious traditions in Korea, especially Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. If possible, these resources should:

• be balanced chronologically: they may include modern times, but the ancient stuff should not be rushed to get to the present;


• be at a near-introductory level; we can presume some knowledge of the origins of these traditions outside Korea, but I’m looking for textbook-type materials, not cutting-edge scholarship;


• distinguish between myth and history, acknowledging the scarcity of early data and also the historical value of myth, while not uncritically embracing myth as history;


• focus on the introduction and development of these religious traditions in Korea.

Anyone? Anyone? Thanks.

[Addendum: I should clarify that the intended reader is me, not my seminary students. So, it's okay if the readings are academically rigorous and not specifically geared toward Christian learners.]

[A Little Help? History of Eastern Religions on Korea was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/21. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

The Self-Serving Conventional Wisdom of the Incurious Laity

In which conventional wisdom is suspected to smoothly glove a muscled hand at the throat: a constructed justification for hoarding knowledge as power.

Are the Bible-blogging church-type educators among my readers reading Anastasia? And if not, why not?

It’s the same way I feel when people at church assure me that no one is interested in learning theology. My question is always the same. Has anyone tried it? Did we run a class like the one I’m proposing and had it flop?

The answer is no. No one has tried it because everyone already *knows* it isn’t going to work.

Oddly enough, the people telling me this are invariably interested. I would love it, they say. But no one else would.

This means my experience of people is exactly contrary to the received wisdom. I get cornered in the parish hall for conversations about theology—when people aren’t too afraid of me, I have to add—on a fairly regular basis. My experience is that people want to know these things. They just don’t know where to start.

Last week’s raft of graduates included a handful of students whom I had had together in “Introduction to the Old Testament.” During one session, as a result of a particular student’s deft handling of Jonathan Culler, they had an amazing conversation about the fact that many seeming concrete things—sexuality, the middle class, race—are invented social constructs. They discovered that, if “everyone knows” something to be true or real, then that thing especially needs to be pried up and dragged to the middle of the floor where the cat can sniff it. All conventional wisdom invites a hermeneutic of suspicion.

And finally—and this is why I am so excited about Anastasia’s post—these students aimed that insight at the “conventional wisdom” about Teh Seminary Book-Larnin’: “everybody knows” that our congregations don’t really want to hear about all thish-yere stuff we learn in these rooms. Except, when you ask around, lots and lots of us have experienced adult learners in the church as intellectually curious and patient of new ideas.

So: whose interests are served by this myth of the incurious laity? Some group who would be inconvenienced by an intelligent, knowledge-hungry mob of adult learners? Who prefer the unidirectional dispensing of approved perspectives to the unpredictable results of informed collaborative construction? Until such a group can be identified, we can assign them some meaningless cipher as a label; let’s just call them, floverly-controlling, flower-grasping, flinsecure fleaders in the flurch.

Example: I recall a student who dismissed all documentary hypotheses of the Pentateuch as “elitist.” He argued that all such inquiry was a fine “brain exercise” for those who enjoy higher education, but that there was no way he was going to inflict it on the “general public” in his care because they would only be “confused” and “outraged.” Clearly, he saw it as part of his ministry to

1. enjoy the power bestowed upon him by the structures of accredited higher education and ordination, and to


2. exercise that power to paternalistically keep the lay people in his care ignorant of such facts he judged they might initially experience as disorienting.

In other words, he didn’t see that he embodied the elitism he decried, and that he depends on that not-seeing to justify his exercise of paternalistic power. Seminary educators will recognize this stance as common. The “conventional wisdom of the incurious laity” serves the interest of those who see knowledge and power as a scarce resource to be hoarded among an elite, empowered ruling class. To challenge that conventional wisdom may be to challenge an oligarchical model of clergy and power. “The facts will set you free.”

[The Self-Serving Conventional Wisdom of the Incurious Laity was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/20. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Again with Commencement '10: Red Shoes Edition

In what ways does your institution recognize the continuing indispensability of women’s scholarship? How does it “high five” women who join its ranks?

Careful observers at our annual commencement would have noticed some of the women faculty, admins, and graduates wearing red shoes. The run-up to Commencement '10 was marked by higher-than-usual student interest in this Garrett tradition, and on the day itself, red shoes seemed to catch the light everywhere.

But why red shoes? Preacher Mom did some original research along that line. The short version is this:

We wear red shoes to remind us of our place as courageous, outrageous women, and to celebrate the rich tradition of female scholarship at GETS.

Read the whole post. You will learn something of Georgia Hearkness, Professor of Applied Theology at G-ETS from 1939–1950, and of her grandmother Abigail (AKA “the woman in the red coat”). You will also find that Rosemary Skinner Keller, first women to serve as Academic Dean at G-ETS, was the first to remember Hearkness’s story by wearing red shoes.

Speaking personally, I am happy to say that I was raised largely by women teachers and scholars. I remember my mom (a lifelong registered nurse) staying up late nights to earn her Masters degree in Gerontology so that she could reliably make the kind of money needed to deliver us from a certain hazard besetting the family in that time and place. My next-oldest sister (now long since a career teacher) played school with me, teaching me my letters and words faster and more engagingly than any of my elementary school teachers could. My oldest sister (who went on to CalTech to become a chemical engineer) stayed up late with me nights to talk speculatively about science, relativity, elementary particles and their habits, the colonization of space, the relation of mind to brain to senses, and how we know what we think we know. (She also opened her bookshelves to me, allowing me to read constantly over my head and regardless of subject matter or age-appropriateness. Rock on, Sis.) Women teachers and scholars had defined my life and its prospects before I mastered long division or graduated to chapter books. While the patriarchy was undoubtedly well at work on me during those years, it’s still the case that women scholars were normal to me before the patriarchy could get very far in abnormalizing them.

I hear stories from time to time, mostly from women academic bloggers, about how some faculty succeed informally but consistently in “high-fiving” their women graduates, not to the exclusion of their male peers but in an above-and-beyond sort of way. What is your experience? Are faculty “putting on the red shoes” in any noticeable way for women’s scholarship and women grads? How or how not? And what do you think of such an attempt?

[Again with Commencement '10: Red Shoes Edition was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/18. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Commencement '10

Every year at this time I read posts like Anastasia’s, on the topic of profs who show up and profs who don’t.

Maybe there will come a time when I don’t get excited about commencement. After all, though this must be at least my sixth or seventh commencement here or there as faculty, I am early enough in my career still to be gratified by those elements of commencement that are “all about me”: my own hard-earned regalia, horsing around with other faculty, basking with admins in a general glow of checking off another reasonably successful year. There will likely come a rainy May day when these goods fail to pay off for me, and I find nothing in it for me that year.

And that will be about right.

Because, as you are already saying to yourself as you suffer through the just-allowably sophomoric, self-indulgent sentiments of my second ’graph, commencement day won’t be about me anyway, and never was, except insofar as I am or am not present to support what’s really going on there. Which is, you know, recognizing students for having done all that stuff that we believe it was so important that they do.

If I’m “over” what’s really going on there, then I’m “over” my vocation. But at least from here, that’s comfortably hard to imagine: once again, commencement was fun, and was most fun after the pre-curtain backstage fashion show and attention had turned where it belonged.

(Probably to be continued in some form.)

[Commencement '10 was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/MONTH/DATE. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Fifty Years

To what course work do these fifty-year seminary alums attribute some of their most important preparation for ministry? Read and see (*cough*…Bible… *cough*).

Last night was our annual, commencement-week reception and dinner for the trustees. As usual, we had also invited our “fifty year” alumni: in this case, members of the class of 1960. Part of the program was for two of these “fifty year alums” to speak briefly on the subject of how seminary prepared them for their ministries.

The first talked gratefully about how seminary had not “trained” him to deal with this or that specific pastoral or ecclesiastical emergency, but had rather educated him, so that he could think his way through situations on a solid platform of accurate data and habits of critical thought. The courses he specifically named? Hebrew, and Greek.

The second speaker recalled two professors that, for him, represented the best of the preparation that seminary offered him. The first professor he recalled for having taught him a large number of important facts. A second professor he recalled for having modeled the compassionate application of such facts. Facts without compassion, he had found, were tools without purpose; and compassion without facts, just useless dreaming. The subjects taught by these memorable, representative faculty? Old Testament and New Testament.

From the critical perspective of fifty years of ministry: Hebrew. Greek. Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. New Testament.

I’m not saying. I’m just saying. :^)

[Fifty Years was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/14. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Feeding Curiosity: Snacks for Hebrew Bible Students

“Food is sleep,” as they say. And, “A brain without sugar is no brain at all.” So, on the occasion of their final exam, I brought my Biblical Hebrew students an Old-Testament-correct snack of unleavened barley cakes and date syrup.

Barley Cakes: My son loves these dry, without any topping or spread.

I mix the dough at 70% hydration: this means that the amount of water equals 70% of the amount of flour. For example, if 500 grams of barley flour, then 350 grams of water. I also add about 1 T olive oil for each 200-300 grams flour, and about 1 (scant) t salt for each 500 grams or so of flour.

• Have a pizza stone in the oven on the middle rack. If you don’t have a pizza stone, wash a clean, very large, unglazed terracotta flower pot very well, allow to dry thoroughly (like overnight), and break it carefully so as to preserve one big piece to use as a convex stone. Preheat oven to about 525-550 if it will go there, or else as high as it will go. If your flowerpot piece explodes, it wasn’t dry enough. Allow the stone or pot to absorb heat for a good thirty minutes after the oven reaches temperature.


• Combine ingredients (no worries about adding in the salt right away, because there’s no leaven to kill);


• Mix together, then let the flour absorb the water for about 45 minutes.


• Knead for about 5 minutes. You’re not building gluten here, just evening out the mixture. If it feels really dry, wet your hands with warm water and knead some more. There’s a fine line here: it’s easy to add too much water and get mud pies, but at the same time, you want as much hydration as you can get since a dry barley dough is very crumbly. Allow it to rest again.


• Chop off pieces of about 100 grams (lemon-sized, say). Roll them in your hands, then flatten them. Use a roller (or clean glass jar) to roll them out on the counter top. Lift carefully.


• Lay one patty on your pizza stone or flower pot piece. (If the latter, then press carefully to maximize contact on the convex surface.)
  


• Cook about 2 1/2 minutes per side on the stone, or about 3–5 minutes on one side against the potsherd. Let the first one cool well on a wire rack, and then break it open: then you’ll know if your cooking through okay.


• Eat warm or eat later.

Date Syrup: My boy tells me that this may be the best thing I have ever made. It’s sweet and refreshing. The ingredients are…dates and water. This is probably the “honey” (דבש) most frequently named in the Hebrew Bible.

• Buy a bag of pitted dates. Whole Foods has them bulk where we are. Get enough to fill a saucepan.


• If you have a blender or food processor, chop them up well (or chop by hand).


• Drop them in the saucepan, and add enough water to cover the dates.


• Bring to a boil, and boil for about five minutes. Reduce heat, and simmer partially covered for 30–60 minutes, until well reduced. You have to stir regularly to break up the “skin.”


• The consistency is like a cross between caramel and apple sauce. You can filter out the solids, but if you chopped really well, everything should dissolve nicely, and the fiber is a nice piece of the nutritional value.


• Allow to cool. Store some in the fridge, and freeze anything you won’t eat soon.

To be really scientific, I ought to have allowed only half of the class to eat the barley cakes and date syrup, and then compared their performance. But, I have always been an old softie, and I also have a lot of date syrup to go through.

What Hebrew-Bible-correct snacks would you like to see in the classroom?

[Feeding Curiosity: Snacks for Hebrew Bible Students was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/11. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Kids Discover: Mesopotamia

My son subscribes to Kids Discover periodical. The current issue is titled, “Mesopotamia,” and is simply excellent.^[FOOTNOTE]

Each two-page spread of “Mesopotamia” is on a single topic, e.g. “Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and More”; “Day to Day”; “Gods and Demons”; “Those Accomplished Mesopotamians”; “The Legendary Gilgamesh and the Origins of Writing”; “How We Know What We Know.”

If that list of topics does not have you slavering for a copy, well…what am I saying? Of course it does.

Each spread comprises a short summary followed by 12–20 photographs and drawings, captioned appropriately for elementary-school-aged kids. I recognize many of my favorite images among these, and also a great many surprises. Speaking of surprises, I am almost embarrassed to say how much I am learning from this juvenile resource (Assyrians crafted a ground-glass lens?).

If you are still on the fence concerning whether to chase down a copy…



I want to say just one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening?

“Expisticy.” [Dang: “extispicy”; we used to joke about “extra spicy”; thanks, Chris.]

Back issues of Kids Discover can be ordered for $3.99 through their home page. “Mesopotamia” is Volume 20, Issue 5, May 2010. You can just enter “Mesopotamia” as a Quick Search term on their Store page.

BACK TO POST (Kids Discover is a periodical “curriculum supplement,” and contains no advertising. See their home page or Facebook page for information on Kids Discover. I do not work for Kids Discover and they do not pay me to say nice things about them.)

[Kids Discover: Mesopotamia was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/06. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

The Deep End of the Pool

A couple of weeks ago, I succeeded in promoting another rank in Taekwon-do. I’m far enough along that I feel the rising temperature from the focused light of the microscope: expectations are higher, both in terms of technical performance and in terms of demonstrating “courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-discipline, and indomitable spirit” (e.g., finding opportunities to offer service to juniors, or embracing the scholarship associated with the tradition). Tying my slightly stiff new belt around my waist in front of the class, the instructor told me in a low voice, “You’re in the deep end of the pool now!”

This exchange has drifted regularly across my harried consciousness as this academic year wheezes toward its end and summer heaves into view. In a few distinct arenas, I find myself in a deeper part of the pool than I have occupied in the past. My summer Intro to OT course will be our first fully online course offering, and what is more, it’s in that perennially challenging “intensive” format. So, there’s that microscope again: the stadium of interested parties extends beyond the usual playing field of participants. Our increased institutional attention to distance learning and to learning technologies has me involved in more complex conversations with admins and other faculty than during my former years as an adjunct.  The deeper end of the pool is more heavily populated, and its very depth can be…unforgiving. Nonetheless, the deep end is the only place for grown-ups, and it’s where the really engaging and consequential games are played.

Where do you find yourself in the deep end of the pool these days?

[The Deep End of the Pool was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/05. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Culturally Diverse Classrooms (Liveblog)

Today, we welcome Dr. Nancy Ramsay (Brite Divinity School) and Dr. Frank Yamada (McCormick Theological Seminary) to host “a faculty workshop on understanding power dimensions in culturally diverse classrooms.”

Should the format afford me opportunity, I’ll try to live blog here from time to time during the day.

[I should have added that the event is organized by Dr. Gennifer Brooks, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.]

Overall: A really good day. Lots to simmer on while walking to and from the train this week.

3:00: When we ask students to put themselves at risk by self-contextualizing and making contextual claims, we want to be prepared to sometimes lead them in “taking a step back”: pulling back to a relatively safe analytical stance.

2:20: “Over time, it becomes less about ‘How can we be multicultural?’ and more about ‘How do we negotiate the multiform culture we comprise?’”

1:30: What does an incoming student “look” like? What does a graduating student “look” like?

1:10: Hard to sum up the things that came out of break-out groups and lunch discussion, except that I really do work with some incredibly smart and reflective educators.

10:55: Given the desirability of at least limited permeability (to define institution), how can that permeability be defined in ways that yet fully promote diversity?

10:20: I have habitually tended to privilege bottom-up construction of systems and of changes to systems, but I find myself persuaded concerning the importance of cultivating “key (powerful) constituencies” in an institution as prerequisite for an organized, team effort toward change.

9:52: Mental tangent: when we talk about a focus on better accomplishing educational mission by improving our own institutional integrity, I keep being reminded of the role of the five tenets of Taikwon-Do in the practice of that art: you become better at the external goal (doing something) by improving your self (becoming something).

9:50: Identifying practices that imagine power as “a scarce commodity,” and those that imagine power as “integrative or expansive.”

9:45: An institution might have a track record and articulate goals regarding diversity and progressive inclusiveness, but could yet be looking for “ways of keeping that in remembrance.”

9:35: Questions around how rooting out systemic oppression and exclusiveness benefits those of the dominant (white, or male, or hetero) group. Responses involve individual benefit and sharing in collective benefit.

9:17: “The work in the classroom will not flourish if there is not concurrent institutional change.” I like starting here: it defuses any individual defensiveness about current practice and results.

9:10: The first half of the day looks to be titled, “Institutional Power and Privilege.”

[Culturally Diverse Classrooms (Liveblog) was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/MONTH/DATE. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Reading-from-the-Page in Presentation: Crazy's Defense

Opinions about how to present effectively (or at least, not crashingly boringly) at the professional conferences come up perennially on the blogs, usually (for us Bible types) around the time of our November professional conference, but at other times as well. Other fields also make their own observations (h/t to Bitternsweet Girl).

Now, Dr. Crazy makes a thorough argument for the “reading from a piece of paper” model of presentation. Crazy is in literary studies, and most of her argument is directly relevant to what we usually do in biblical studies: present novel interpretations of literary source material that is already well known to our hearers.

As usual, Crazy’s post draws thoughtful comments, some of which challenge the distinction she makes between presentations of experiments (as in the sciences) and presentations as described above (as in literary and biblical studies, though I know our epigraphy and archaeology sections might fall more into the description-of-research mode).

Take a look. It’s never too soon to be thinking about the next conference. Does Crazy make you re-think the “reading a paper” mode of presentation favorably, even though that’s almost certainly not how you teach?

[Reading-from-the-Page in Presentation: Crazy's Defense was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/30. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Well, It's Like This...

So what does it take for a reasonably regular blogger to go AWOL for nearly two weeks? Not much, it turns out. I changed my daily schedule a bit in order to get more physical exercise, and there was this beautiful spot in the day when I usually write my posts, and…

Anyway, I’m playing with solutions. Keep me on your reader, if you would, while I settle into a new routine.

To thank you for stopping by, and to keep such lapses as this of mine in perspective, I offer you The Known Universe:



[Well, It's Like This... was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/28. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

What is, An Impending Sense of Job Insecurity?

Answer: According to Crossley, this dread feeling could potentially unite biblical scholars of all competing stripes.

In the online journal Bible and Interpretation, James Crossley writes that biblical scholars can hang together in defense of their discipline’s relevance, or we can hang separately in the public square of budget cuts in higher education.

The humanities will no doubt be the first target within universities in times of recession and cuts, and attention has already turned to those subjects deemed "irrelevant." Unfortunately, the critical study of the Bible can be misunderstood as academics at prayer[.]

Please do read the whole thing: it is not very long.

Joseph Kelly offers a brief round-up (first paragraph) of bloggers already commenting on the piece.

[What is, An Impending Sense of Job Insecurity? was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/15. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]