CONGRATULATIONS to Dr James Bowley, who has received a teaching award:

JFP Person of the Day: Dr. James Bowley

by Ronni Mott (Jackson Free Press)
October 19, 2009

"I love my job!" proclaims Dr. James E. Bowley on his Web site. Bowley, an associate professor in the Millsaps College department of religious studies, teaches courses on the Bible and related religious traditions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. "What's not to like about spending the day with great colleagues and students thinking and conversing and researching about religious traditions, reading beautiful or even shocking texts, and investigating intriguing religious practices?" he writes.

In addition to teaching, Bowley as spent years studying fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered around 1950 in several caves surrounding the Dead Sea in Israel. He is considered one of the leading experts on the scrolls, which consist of roughly 900 documents dating from 200 BCE to 50 CE, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The Mississippi Humanities Council has named Bowley a Humanities Teacher of the Year for 2009, an award that goes to one humanities scholar in each of Mississippi's colleges and universities every year.

[...]

As part of the award, Bowley will present a free public lecture on Wednesday, titled "Living by Fragments."

"Looking at the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls has made me think about the way we look at life by fragments today," Bowley said in a release. "The lecture is not so much about the scrolls but about giving people something interesting and enjoyable to think about."

[...]