This essay argues for a revitalization of General Education by making it more holistic and more engaged with the world.

Part of a panel discussion in the Use and Influence of the New Testament seminar

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of meditation systems in Asia taught at McMaster University in Fall 2018

Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code prohibits insulting the Prophet and carries a mandatory death penalty. This law was passed based on a claim of ijma‘ (consensus among Islamic scholars) that such an offense is subject to a hadd (divinely fixed) punishment. Nearly half of those charged under this statute crimes of hadd are Christians, who mak…[Read more]

Hand-drawn illustration of a ‘Iudaea Capta’ coin, after LIMC ‘IUDAEA’ 14 (and BMCRE 117)

In this course, students will analyze texts that Americans have treated as “scripture.” Students will read texts that present themselves as scripture, such as selections from the Book of Mormon and a Holy Sacred and Divine Roll and Book (a Shaker text). They will also read texts that have attained a sort of canonicity within American culture, such…[Read more]

How should we understand the naming of legendary figures like Solomon in biblical titles? The ancient practice of attribution is often obscured by scholars committed to the modern construction of authorship. Texts such as 11QPsa XXVII (“David’s Compositions”) demonstrate an altogether different understanding of this ancient practice. Using Prov.…[Read more]

The Gospel of John is not unique in representing Jesus as performing miracles, but the way that John uses signs to point to Jesus’s Christological identity stands out among the canonical gospels. In John, when Jesus is called χριστός—Christ, messiah—it is often in the context of a sign being performed. However, the relationship between Jesus…[Read more]

The Gospel of John is not unique in representing Jesus as performing miracles, but the way that John uses signs to point to Jesus’s Christological identity stands out among the canonical gospels. In John, when Jesus is called χριστός—Christ, messiah—it is often in the context of a sign being performed. However, the relationship between Jesus…[Read more]

In a recent essay in Rethinking Marxism, as part of a special issue on the legacy of Louis Althusser’s thinking,
Tyson E. Lewis takes up Althusser’s thinking on schooling, trade unionism, and seminars to delimit the concepts of
interpellation, counterinterpellation, and disinterpellation respectively. While Lewis’s work is a crucial first step…[Read more]

This essay offers an introduction to select disciplinary developments in the study of history and in historical study of the Hebrew Bible. It focuses first and foremost on “cultural history,” a broad category defined by nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in anthropology and sociology, literary theory and linguistics, and other fie…[Read more]

Have you ever thought about the language you speak? If the answer is yes, surely you might have wondered: Where does my language come from? How does it change? What are its relationships with other languages? How do its literary and cultural production reflect such evolution and connections? In this course we will approach classic works of Spanish…[Read more]

Spanish 260.001 is a methodological introduction to Hispanic Literature. We focus on three specific genres, Narrative, Poetry and Drama, and the course’s goal is to equip the student with the practical abilities to analyze a literary text in Spanish as well as with a basic knowledge of the major historical trends in Hispanic literature from its o…[Read more]

In this chapter I detail two socialist grading practices, one for grading classroom discussion and the other for determining final grades. Throughout the descriptions I argue for why they are socialist and how I began using them.

This paper seeks to explain why Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People constitutes a valid historical work, rather than a religious text. It starts by addressing the nature of historical vs non-historical narrative, focusing on a concept of “genealogy of information.” It couples ideas from narrative theory, historiography, and…[Read more]

This paper shows a systematization of the research projects belong to Universidad de Ciencias Pedagógicas Enrique Jose Varona, Havana, Cuba between 2014-2016 and its projection for 2017 year. This paper has three essentials parts. Firstly, it explains theorist statements and way for designs a project in newest university. Secondly, is the…[Read more]

This chapter describes the creation of “America’s Public Bible,” an interactive work of digital scholarship that identifies quotations of the Bible in U.S. newspapers. The chapter explains how the project works from a computational perspective and, more importantly, how those computational methods connect to research questions in American…[Read more]

The proliferation of TV fiction can be partly explained by TV producers attuning their products to draw audience’s attention. Narratives of love dominate the plots and almost always the good is pitted against the evil, rich against the poor – ultimately the good always wins. The formula may be clichéd, but in places where news of war, te…[Read more]

What can a body do? is a central question to religious thinking: What does it mean to be human? To be non-human? What is a human body? Where are its limits? What can a religious body do differently? This question of the body is one way to begin an inquiry into what it means to be human, and religion is one way to think about the limits of…[Read more]

Precirculated paper for 10th Nangeroni Seminar, experimentally reflecting on the gendering of knowledge in ancient Jewish literatures (esp. third and second centuries BCE) and modern scholarship upon them.