Open access publishing (OA) not only removes price and permission restrictions to academic research, but also represents an opportunity to reassess what publishing means to the humanities. OA is increasingly on the agenda for humanities researchers in the UK, having been mandated in various forms by universities and governmental funders strongly…[Read more]

This short essay considers rabbinic ideas of reproduction, likeness, and species variation in conversation with the work of Joann Sfar and Sunaura Taylor. Part of Ancient Jew Review’s Forum on Animals.

This research will attempt to evaluate how the thinking of Floridi, especially his emphasis on information, could in some way affect the way we approach art practice. It rests upon an existing body of study about art practice, pursued through a selective literature review of the works of Floridi. As artists rediscover the notion of participation,…[Read more]

The report takes a brief look into Lai Yung-Hsiang’s New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries. I will start by giving a short account of its histories and context followed by its current status and use, as well as a description of its basic principles. In particular, I would like to compare it with Liu Guojun’s classification for Chinese…[Read more]

This essay looks at the ways in which library services relate to the visual culture of the 21st Century. I will begin by discussing what is meant by visual culture followed by brief reports of the current trends. An account of current library practice will be given, along with a short photo essay depicting the changes in the world of libraries. I…[Read more]

This paper looks at the idea of digital libraries as social systems. It gives a short account of what it means to define digital libraries as social systems, including the view of digital libraries as ecosystems or ecologies.
A focus on R. David Lankes’ idea of libraries as facilitators of conversation leads us to the sociology of Niklas Luhmann…[Read more]

The movement for open access publishing is often said to have its roots in the scientific disciplines, having been popularised by scientific publishers and formalised through a range of top-down policy interventions. But there is an often-neglected pre-history of open access that can be found in the early DIY publishers of the late ‘80s and e…[Read more]

Presentation delivered at ISMPP 2019.

Neis traces an expression of bodily language (kavvanat halev, literally “directing the heart”) from biblical to early rabbinic sources and demonstrates how it oriented people to the affective, physical, and spatial dimensions of prayer. Rejecting a binary that would treat such language as either mental/subjective (and thus metaphorically) or sol…[Read more]

Preview of Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (SBL Press, 2019) https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetails.asp?ID=064211C&PG=1&Type=BL&PCS=SBL

From SBL Press:
In her book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature, Meredith J. C. Warren identifies and defines a new genre in ancient texts that she terms…[Read more]

Preview of Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (SBL Press, 2019) https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetails.asp?ID=064211C&PG=1&Type=BL&PCS=SBL

From SBL Press:
In her book, Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature, Meredith J. C. Warren identifies and defines a new genre in ancient texts that she terms…[Read more]

The early Church regarded dreams as potential messages from God, private revelations that appear as visions while the soul is undistracted by bodily sensations. Sleep, with its accompanying dreams, was also believed to be the temporary state of the disembodied soul as it awaits the resurrection of its body at the Last Judgment. Not only did…[Read more]

Early medieval literate culture, dominated by Christian monks and clerics, was focused on interpreting biblical texts and correlating them with a theological system devised in patristic times and late antiquity. Central to biblical exegesis was the fourfold method that distinguished the literal (or historical) sense of Old Testament narratives…[Read more]

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim (early Palestinian Jewish sages) of the Mishnah and Tosefta (redacted ca. early 3rd century CE) set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction, zoology and species crossings. The human here…[Read more]

Article exploring the use of sibling language in associations beyond Judean or Christian groups.

A chapter exploring rivalries among groups in ancient Greek cities of Asia Minor.

Article exploring Jewish or Judean groups in the context of associations at Hierapolis.

This article makes several claims. It argues that the genre of “pilgrim’s literature” is present in rabbinic sources, and identifies rabbinic pilgrimage itineraries. Secondly, it shows that aside from the expected melancholic post-Temple itinerary, there exist itineraries for Babylon and for biblical conquest that do a very dif…[Read more]

Article on ancient biographical or autobiographical stories regarding journeys in pursuit of wisdom.