Jewish relation to representational art is determined mostly by the Second Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” As science has observed, the…[Read more]

THE ORIGIN OF ANTINOUS CULT IN ROMAN SETTLEMENT NEAR SOČANICA А Roman settlement, located near the village of Sočanica, was part-ly explored around 1960’s. Systematic excavations headed by archae-ologist E. Čerškov and resulted in quite a large number of mobile andimmobile finds helped form a clearer picture of the history, economyand urban layout…[Read more]

The aim of this research, focusing on representations of light and the symbolism of early Christian lamp decorations, has been to examine and summarise the existing knowledge of the symbolism of light in the Mediterranean region and the models by which this symbolism was manifested in the early Christian visual culture. Lamps with Early Christian…[Read more]

Lamp as a Symbol in Theology and Iconology of Light in the Mediterranean / Light and fire have been a part of the religious experience since the dawn of civilization, its cultic use can be traced back to as early as the Paleolithic. Seen as divine emanations, light and fire were experienced as a symbol of the divine presence. This symbolism can be…[Read more]

Introduction to “Digital Methods and Traditional Chinese Literary Studies,” a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture.

This set of lesson plans is the result of a two-day planning workshop to develop a cross-institutional framework for promoting broadly collaborative, community-based undergraduate and graduate student research employing the tools and methods of digital humanities. The goal was to expand on established faculty dialogues and initiatives at each…[Read more]

This presentation was part of the Reframing History: Public Digital Humanities and the Making of New Civic Narratives
Panel at the conference.

Panel description: Showcasing generative digital scholarship and public humanities practice, this panel will explore efforts to radically reframe local and regional histories of Central Florida and…[Read more]

Bijan Elahi, “Five Scenes from Icarus,” The Kenyon Review issue XLI (2019): 75-77.

Introduction to special issue of IJHS: The Gift in India in Theory and Practice

During nonemergency appointments at traditional sites of āyurvedic healthcare in Kerala, South India, classically trained Brāhmaṇa physicians and their patients seldom exchange anything of substance (whether medicinal or monetary). The physician-patient interface instead routinely involves an exchange of knowledge. Interactions between phy…[Read more]

We analyze the processing of cereals and its role at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Anatolia (10th / 9th millennium BC), a site that has aroused much debate in archaeological discourse.

This essay offers an autobiographical account of reading across literatures and languages. I compare the selves that I have developed in each of three languages—Russian, Persian, and Georgian—over the course of many years of reading. Refusing to make literary traditions coterminous with national identities, I reflect here on love through lan…[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.

3D prints have been promised as a saviour of material truth, a path to universal primary source accessibility. By replicating a Babylonian tablet using several 3D print technologies, we show that 3D scanning and printing are as fraught as any other representational technology. The scans and prints alike feature technological infidelities, some of…[Read more]

A presentation for graduate students in the Department of English at Michigan State University.

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]

This thought experiment considers whether Siamese (Conjoined) are allowed to marry according to Halacha. It considers various aspects of the Biblical bans on incest and offers a very contemporary discussion about the meaning of personhood. This paper uses medical journals, works on medical history, and various responsa to find a precedent and…[Read more]

Les usages de la reproduction sonore parmi les musulmans mauriciens illustrent les liens entre religion publique et médiation religieuse. Les usages de la reproduction sonore parmi les musulmans mauriciens illustrent les liens entre religion publique et médiation religieuse. Ces deux dimensions de la religion s’appuient sur des objets mat…[Read more]

Orientation towards a point of political and historical allegiance outside the boundaries of the nation-state is often taken to be a defining quality of diasporas, and this aligns with the ubiquitous tendency of Islamic practice to engage with sources of long- distance, or indeed global, religious authority. In this article, I shall investigate…[Read more]