Program of the Sensory Histories of Place workshop, organized by me and Elvan Baştürk Cobb, at ANAMED in 2015.

The Tannaitic Laws of Battery: Scripture and Halakhah
Amit Gvaryahu
Four laws in the Pentateuch discuss fights between people. The arrangement of these laws and their relationship to one another were debated in the Tannaitic academies. The school of Rabbi Ishmael read these laws as a single entity, each law “coming to teach things omitted” in…[Read more]

A review of Katell Berthelot, Jonathan Price (ed.), In the Crucible of Empire: The Impact of Roman Citizenship upon Greeks, Jews and Christians. Interdisciplinary studies in ancient culture and religion, 21.

abstract A foundational text in the study of Tannaitic Midrash and Halakhah, Sifre Deuteronomy 122 is a list of places where Halakhah ʿ qpt scripture. This word, ʿ qpt, has long been understood to mean ‘circumvent’, ‘bypass’ or ‘belie’, and the pericope has been read as a list of places where ‘Halakhah circumvents scripture’, and thus a testament…[Read more]

This short piece reviews Michael Kater’s recent overview of culture in Nazi Germany, taking issue both with its core scholarly contentions and its problematic use of language.

This co-authored piece introduces our co-edited volume ‘Dreams of Germany’. It explores how, where and by whom notions of ‘musical Germanness’ have been constituted in the modern era, and to what effect. Picking up on ideas first explored systematically by Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter in their 2002 collection ‘Music and German National…[Read more]

This article looks at the field of Black Judaism, with a viewto understanding how scholars articulate the distinctionbetween Black Judaism and the Hebrew Israelite move-ment. The Hebrew Israelites are an autonomous AfricanAmerican movement who identify themselves as descen-dants of the Israelites and some of whom self-identify asJews, probably…[Read more]

Published in Sächsische Leute und Länder Benennung und Lokalisierung von Gruppenidentitäten im ersten Jahrtausend, and a considerably expanded version of a paper delivered at the Internationales Sachsensymposion in Leipzig, 2015.

The article considers the literary representation of Saxons in the works of the late antique authors Sidonius Ap…[Read more]

Religious practice is shaped by technology. Technological practice is shaped by religion. Since the early 1990s, this parallel formation has become visible through the internet and other digitally networked technologies, as the perception of a barrier between the digital and the non-digital dissolves. Fully rendered 3D temples and churches, prayer…[Read more]

This is an enhanced compilation of relevant entries from Clavis Patrum Graecorum which was compiled by me (GS) for the “Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations” volume up to Nov. 2015. It is an embryonic version of what was later substantially enlarged and published as “A Bibliographical Guide to Arabic Patristic Translations and Related T…[Read more]

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion…[Read more]

This article analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West…[Read more]

In this seminar we will examine representations of health and accounts of disease in a variety of Chinese religions. We will explore the various vectors of disease, including the so-called “winds” and various types of demonic infestation. We will identify modes of
healing that employ therapies such as mineral, animal, and vegetable drugs, exo…[Read more]

Rising on the shoulders of the İstanbul Araştırmaları Yıllığı / Annual of Istanbul Studies, the relaunched YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies is now peer-reviewed. Thanks to a reformed advisory board, whose expertise covers all periods and disciplines in the study of Istanbul’s past and present, the journal now sets a much higher academic…[Read more]

In late-ninth-century China, poetry and meditation became equated — not just metaphorically, but as two equally valid means of achieving stillness and insight. This article discusses how several strands in literary and Buddhist discourses fed into an assertion about such a unity by the poet-monk Qiji 齊己 (864–937?). One strand was the aesthet…[Read more]

The British rule still has a sway on us and we still unconsciously see them as our masters/ or a better race than us in terms of looks, language, traditions clothing style and hobbies. Though the Britishers only enforced their norms through law and schooling but its impact was long-lasting and deep-rooted amongst the young natives.the current…[Read more]

This article focuses on Jewish women’s experiences of the amen meal ritual. The central intention of this meal is to achieve many recitations of the word “amen” in response to benedictions recited for different sorts of food. The women’s voices and experiences, reflected in in-depth interviews with participants and participant observa…[Read more]

This essay examines the issue of David’s (lack of) clothing in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 15. It asks: what potential meanings would be at play for ancient readers of these texts? Drawing on research into social memory and “forgetting,” it argues that Judean readers would partially warrant Michal’s distaste for David’s dressing-down, while still…[Read more]