Category Archives: Uncategorized

The BRANE Collective is excited to announce a new series showcasing the work of newly minted PhDs in conversation with established scholars. Our first two events are coming up: Daniel O. McClellan“Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Perspectives” Discussants: Debra Scoggins Ballentine, Mark McEntire, Brian Rainey, and Jen SingletaryThursday, Oct. 22 4:00Continue reading “Announcing the New PhD Showcase”

A BRANE Collective Panel convened by Jenna Stover-KempThursday, Oct. 8 ◆ 10 am PDT REGISTER HERE We who study ancient Mediterranean texts tend to be concerned with successfully transmitting the past: from scribes copying to performers memorizing, we highlight the preservation of what has come before. Even our departures from the preservation model still emphasize directContinue reading “Literary Creativity and Forgetting”

The Challenges to Forming Feminist Lineages in the Academy a two-part conversation with Mika Ahuvia Tuesday, September 15th, 1pm PSTandMonday October 12, 1pm PSTPLEASE REGISTER HERE Events will be live captioned by a professional CART provider. Join Mika Ahuvia, scholar of late antique Judaism, as she launches her new project identifying and documenting the challengesContinue reading ““Can Feminism be Institutionalized?””

A Forum Organized Around New Work by Molly M. Zahn Part 1 of a 2-part series curated by James Nati: Ancient Hebrew Literature Beyond “The Bible” For Second Temple Jewish readers and writers, there was no “Bible;” instead what we find in the literature from this period is a broad spectrum of sacred texts fromContinue reading “Towards a New Map of Second Temple Literature: Revelation, Rewriting, and Genre Before the Bible”

new projects: Reading Eglon’s FatnessJackie Wyse-Rhodes writes about portrayals of the natural world in Second Temple Jewish literature. Her other interests include apocalypticism, moral imagination as it relates to embodiment, and the reception history of the book of Numbers, particularly its depictions of women. Narrative Empathy and the History of David’s RiseJulian Chike is aContinue reading “Workshop: Ethical Reading and the Hebrew Bible”

Launch: Listening Session, Friday, July 3, 2020, 12pm EST Choosing whom and how to cite is a complex issue not limited to any single event, issue, or disgraced scholar. It pertains to how we operate as part of a scholarly community, how we produce scholarship and re-inscribe structures of power, and what it means toContinue reading “The Ethics of Citation and Interpretation: A Series”

The BRANE Collective is horrified about today’s news that Jan Joosten has been convicted for possession of images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children. We are angry, first of all, on behalf of the victims, and acknowledge the work of the French agencies who exposed this crime.  We affirm that institutional affiliation, aContinue reading “Today’s news”

Breaking and Rethinking the Boundaries Between Biblical and Nonbiblical Literature This forum attempts to chart a powerful but unnamed phenomenon equally at home in biblical and non-biblical Jewish literature. Already evident in the Deuteronomic literature of the exilic period, scholars like Najman, Levinson and Zahn have demonstrated that this phenomenon stands equally behind texts likeContinue reading “Pilot Forum: Revelation Before the Bible”

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 limitContinue reading “Pilot Event: Opening the Field”

1. Inclusivity: Our first principle is inclusion of all scholars interested in advancing the study of biblical and ancient Near Eastern literatures and their cultural worlds from the invention of writing through late antiquity regardless of their ethnicity/race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and economic status. This is first for basic moral and human reasons, but also intellectual ones.Continue reading “Principles”