This volume presents a case for how and why people in archaic and classical Greece worshipped Underworld gods.

These gods are often portrayed as malevolent and transgressive, giving an impression that ancient worshippers derived little or no benefit from developing ongoing relationships with them. In this book, the first book-length study that…[Read more]

The American Religious Sounds Project, a joint effort from Michigan State University and Ohio State University, has been gathering sound recordings of American religious life since 2014. The project is undertaking a dual process of expanding to other institutions and ingesting the collection into the Vincent Voice Library at MSU.
With thousands…[Read more]

This article examines the young girls aged between seven and eleven year old who are elected to serve in the cult of Athena Polias, patron deity of Athens, in the classical period (roughly 5 th century, BC). I look at the creation of the dress given to Athena at the yearly Panathenaia festival, the creation of which is the main activity of their…[Read more]

A very critical overview of seemingly disparate films

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]

The user experience movement is gaining momentum in libraries, but its adoption and adaptation into an organizational culture may present unexpected challenges. In June 2014, the Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries created a User Experience unit and in a short time, established a solid and reputable team of practitioners. This success,…[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]

Illustration of various features in the arrangement of Linear B tablets in the photo plates of Scripta Minoa II, and a proposed rationale in terms of underlying art.

This article describes an active-learning exercise intended to help teach copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses. In the exercise students use a worksheet to draw original pictures, create derivative pictures on tracing paper, select Creative Commons licenses, and explore commercial usage, fair use, and copyright infringement.…[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]

Seventeen years ago, Brian Shefton wrote, “the distribution pattern of the Greek imports for the Hallstatt period has crystallized a number of years ago and is unlikely to be greatly modified in the future except on point of detail” (Böhr and Shefton 2000, 28). Indeed, publications describing Greek pottery have reached similar conclusions: Gree…[Read more]

In this paper, I explore how Greek and Roman poets alluded to the lamentatory background of elegy through the figures of the swan and the nightingale. After surveying the ancient association of elegy and lament (Section I) and the common metapoetic function of birds from Homer onwards (Section II), I analyse Hellenistic and Roman examples where…[Read more]

This article forms part of a symposium on Paul Cartledge’s ‘Democracy: a life’ (2016). It argues in support of new approaches to Athenian democracy focused on the experience of those who were not active participants in the political institutions of the democracy but excluded because of their status (women, metics, slaves). It further argues that…[Read more]

Reading and performing Aristophanes’ Lysistrata through the work of Judith Butler on performativity and precarity. This paper explores both Aristophanes’ play and the experience of performing and studying it.

Semantic and syntactical judgments play a central role in the development of classification systems. Syndetic relationships are relationships between indexing terms, sometimes referred to as cross references. Due to the extensiveness of synonyms for different concepts in natural languages, subject indexing has historically focused on developing…[Read more]

The internet immerses us in waves of traumatic information, leaving us desperately crawling through media wreckage to make sense of the world. We are left alienated from a reality that never settles into a cohesive narrative. Media wreckage in my argumentation denotes the fragmentation of reality occasioned by the digital acting as the dominant…[Read more]

Social organizations, institutions, governments, and bureaucracies are all manifestations of power distribution. Many contemporary theories on power are at least partly informed by notions that were introduced in General Systems Theory. Public libraries are open systems. In an average organization, a hierarchy divides tasks, sets rules, and…[Read more]