Call for Participants
This pilot event invites scholars of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism to think about what constrains us in our scholarship – what obstacles stand in the way of the flourishing of our intellectual work – and what might be possible when we find ways out of these constraints.
What gatekeeping practices limit the scope and impact of our research? How do assumptions about what “real scholarship” looks like constrain our ideas, our creativity, and our relationships with one another? How do we remove these obstacles or find new forms of intellectual community – where our hard-earned knowledge and skills as historians, philologists, and/or scholars of religion can thrive and develop – and what kind of research might be possible when we do?
Participants will be asked to share a piece of scholarly writing, a project outline, a primary text or set of texts, or a set of questions from their current research, and present it through this framework. Materials may be pre-circulated if desired, and the exact format will be determined in collaboration with participants. Depending on the level of interest, we may choose to hold a virtual meeting or set of meetings, share work and feedback asynchronously, or a combination of the two.
If you are a scholar of HB/Early Judaism interested in being part of this pilot, please send an informal, brief (one paragraph) description of what you might like to present to branecollective@protonmail.com. Graduate students welcome.
Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective 