Together we seek to model the redemptive, liberatory, activist, feminist approach to collaborative working to which both authors are committed as teachers, students, rabbis and activists. In our rabbinic chain of tradition (more particularly through other female rabbis) we explore, through the lenses of student and teacher, the 5-year rabbinic…[Read more]

This article serves as an injunction for queer biblical studies to be reclaimed and mobilised as activist practice. First, I discuss the application and activist potential of queer theory – in and beyond the academy. To address concerns around queer elitism, I argue how rupturing the binary between theory and practice recharges the accessibility a…[Read more]

After an arrest was made in the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting (27 October 2018), it came to light that the shooter’s social media page was emblazoned with a citation from John’s Gospel 8:44 and a rough paraphrase of what the shooter thought it meant: “Jews are the children of Satan”. In the days that followed the shooting, educators scrambl…[Read more]

This article argues that ecological hermeneutics, when taught in the biblical studies classroom, needs to draw on its roots in environmental activism. It recommends prioritising the urgency of the contemporary crisis alongside activist ways to respond to it over the teaching of the history and methodology of this approach. Singling out two topics,…[Read more]

This article argues for the disabled body as a site of resistance and for the biblical studies classroom as one venue to mobile towards world-changing activism. After reviewing a range of models from disability studies (the medical, social/minority, religious and political/relational models) this article advocates for what the authors call…[Read more]

Courses on the Bible, gender, and sexuality offer many opportunities to promote social justice in the classroom. Instead of emphasizing course content, this article focuses on practical strategies and tactics that incorporate social justice into the everyday teaching of these courses. Drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theory, as well as…[Read more]

This paper discusses my activities in the classroom and beyond to address African contexts of the HIV and AIDS crisis. Alongside an account of my strategies, encounters and journeys, I discuss the activist Gugu Dlamini and Mmutle, a trickster of African folklore. Both act as inspirations for the role of change agent.

Introduction

In West Africa, Berber groups such as the Tuareg use inscribed silver jewelry – rings, pendants and plaques – as talismans. A ring with a curved or flat frontal area may be inscribed with a linear cipher or, if large, carry a “magic square” design. A survey of 132 Tuareg/Berber items revealed that the symbol repertoire appears to be drawn from ov…[Read more]

In Islamic mysticism and theurgy, the Seven Seals represent in graphic form the Greatest Name of God; in Jewish Kabbalah, the Seals bear individual Divine Names which collectively form a “Great Name.” We review and compare the primary interpretations and secondary associations for each Seal in Islam and Judaism, from which it is clear that the two…[Read more]

Julius Wellhausen proposed a “sharp break” between ancient Israelite religion and early Judaism: for him, the eighth-century prophets were the “spiritual destroyers of old Israel” and the forerunners of early Judaism. The biblical theologian Brevard Childs rejected Wellhausen’s reconstruction and insisted instead that “very strong theological…[Read more]

As the Pāṇḍava brothers move through the forest in the third book of the Mahābhārata, they hear stories of fantastic transformations and journeys: a band of gods all masked as the same prince, dice that become thieving birds, a sage turned into a hunted deer, a woman who traverses Yama’s realm. These tales recast and elucidate the condit…[Read more]

Wir verfügen insgesamt über wenige Quellen zur Verfassungsgeschichte und dem
Rechtswesen im vandalischen Nordafrika. Die vorherrschende Sicht lässt sich in etwa
folgendermaßen zusammenfassen: Das vandalische Afrika war ein zweigeteiltes Gemeinwesen.
›Germanische‹ Vandalen und ›Romanen‹ lebten nebeneinander und jede dieser
Gru…[Read more]

Syllabus for a level 2 course on Health, Healing and Religion: Comparative Views. To be taught online Fall 2020.
Please contact me if you want more details of the online content (there are 4 short videos per module, plus other resources)

In the winter of 476 A.D. the Ostrogoths, hungry and exhausted from wandering for months along the barren confines of the Byzantine Empire, wrote to Emperor Zeno in Constantinople requesting permission to enter the walled city of Epidaurum and just kinda crash and charge their phones. Closer to home, Orpheus walks Eurydice through a suburban…[Read more]

Interview with Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, on her life, her anti-nuclear and peace activism, and ongoing trial as part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

This essay explores how and why three early Christian figures–Epiphanius, Romanos the Melode, and Ambrosiaster–have, at various times, been imagined as former Jews. By applying a hermeneutics of conversion, this essay argues that the significance of these three Christians’ ex-Jewishness lies not in its historicity (or falsity) but in the way…[Read more]

A description and edition of a fragment of the early rabbinic work Sifre Numbers, miscatalogued as a different work, found in the university library, Wrocław.

It is often claimed that the mortuary traditions that appeared in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD are an expression of new forms of ethnic identity, based on the putative memorialisation of a ‘Germanic’ heritage. This article considers the empirical basis for this assertion and evaluates it in the light of previously proposed ethnic con…[Read more]

Focusing on the use and abuse in the study of Byzantine archaeology and Urbanism of the idea of the “Invisible Cities” as introduced in literature by Italo Calvino, this article attempts to set a framework for understanding Byzantine cities within clear and scientifically defined analytical categories as part of a modernist agenda. At the same tim…[Read more]