March 11 – 13, 2007 A conference exploring the reception history of stories of “minor” female characters in the Hebrew Bible. Speakers included religious historian Stephen Prothero; Bible scholars Katheryn Pfisterer Darr (Boston University), J. Cheryl Exum (University of Sheffield), Martien Halvorson-Taylor (University of Virginia), Erin Runions (Pomona College), and Ken Stone (Chicago Theological Seminary); […]
A reception to celebrate new books by the medievalist faculty in the Dept. of Religion: Peter S. Hawkins was Professor of Religion and Director of the Luce Program in Scripture and Literary Arts at Boston University from 2000 to 2008. His work has long centered on Dante in such works as Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural […]
Kristin Schwain, Luce Visiting Assistant Professor in Scripture and Visual Arts, Department of Religion, Boston University In 1927, the African American author, diplomat, and songwriter James Weldon Johnson published a series of poems intended to preserve the sermons of “old-time Negro preacher[s]” before they vanished from the American scene. The opening prayer and seven sermons […]
Professor Diana Lobel, Boston University Department of Religion This text-based presentation explored traditional and Sufi interpretations of a mysterious Qur’anic verse. Sufi improvisation on this verse in turn provided the key to an enigmatic passage in Bahya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, a profound guidebook of medieval Sufi-Jewish spirituality. Diana Lobel has written extensively on the […]
James Carroll was born in Chicago in 1943, and raised in Washington D.C. where his father, an Air Force general, served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is the author of numerous novels including the New York Times bestsellers Mortal Friends(1978), Family Trade (1982), and Prince of Peace (1984). The City Below (1994) andSecret Father (2003) […]
Sandow Birk, adapter and illustrator of Dante’s Divine Comedy In 2004-2005 Sandow Birk illustrated and, with Marcus Sanders, adapted Dante’s Divine Comedy, placing Dante’s classic text within the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Tokyo. Working with director Sean Meredith and puppeteer Paul Zaloom, and utilizing the vocal talents of […]
Professor Robert Alter, The University of California at Berkeley Professor Alter led a symposium for graduate students and faculty exploring the role of the study of language in literary studies. This event was co-sponsored by the Humanities Foundation, the Luce Program in Scripture and Literary Arts, the University Professors, and the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies […]
Professor Robert Alter, The University of California at Berkeley Robert Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published many acclaimed works on the Bible, literary modernism, and contemporary Hebrew literature, including The Art of Biblical Narrative, The Art of Biblical Poetry, and Canon and […]
Professor Jennifer Knust, Boston University School of Theology Though the story of Jesus and the adulteress found in the Gospel of John is now widely known, its early history is, in fact, quite complex. The pericope adulterae boasts both a unique transmission history and a remarkably diverse set of interpretations. Though potentially dangerous, the pericope was not […]
Franz Wright was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in the Midwest and Northern California. He has published more than 15 collections of poetry and 5 translations of modern and contemporary French and German poets, including Ranier Maria Rilke. In 2003 he received the Voelcker Prize for Poetry and in 2004 he was […]