PSCO 2010-11 news

NEWS ON THE PHILADELPHIA SEMINAR ON CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 2010-11 from Annette Yoshiko Reed:

48th Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, 2010-2011

"Beyond Scare Quotes: Rethinking Words and Things in the Study of Ancient 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'"

Co-chairs: Phillip Fackler and Phillip Webster (Penn) / Coordinator: Annette Yoshiko Reed (Penn)

Scare quotes are everywhere in the study of "Judaism" and "Christianity" in antiquity. The ideological import of these terms - along with other words previously thought neutral and descriptive, such as "orthodoxy" and "heresy" - has been exposed. We as scholars can no longer blithely assume a direct correspondence between the categories our sources use and social reality; the words themselves shape reality. Although this insight is not new, it has recently come to dominate discussion in the field, concurrent with the newfound interest in the construction of "Judaism" and "Christianity" as distinct, mutually exclusive "religions." Arguably, however, the time has come to theorize beyond scare quotes. If the words we use do not correspond simply or directly to things, what actually are the objects of study for students of ancient "Judaism" and "Christianity"? Could the appellations "Judaism" and "Christianity" most helpfully be thought of as referring to specific discourses? As ideologies? And what exactly would either of those options mean? Would more attention to group theory help? Identity theory? Could a re-thinking of how the relationship between words and things, and the limits of the heurism of categories and taxonomy, help to re-theorize the relationship between belief and practice? With the recent advent of a near revolution in thinking about the relationship between Jews, Christians, and others in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, the time may be ripe for an extended discussion regarding of some of the most basic questions in the field: what exactly are the objects of our study when we say we are studying "Judaism" and "Christianity"? And how do we study them?

Schedule [unless otherwise noted, all meetings will be held at 7pm in the Second Floor Lounge of Cohen (Logan) Hall at the University of Pennsylvania]

23 September 2010 - Dale Martin (Yale), "Purity of Language"

21 October 2010 - Seth Schwartz (Columbia), "How Many Judaisms Were There? A Critique of Mason and Boyarin on Categorization"

17 November 2010 - Ra'anan S. Boustan (UCLA), topic TBA [please note that this meeting falls on a Wednesday, rather than the usual Thursday]

January 2010 - TBA

17 February 2010 - Virginia Burrus (Drew), topic TBA

30 March 2010 - Elizabeth Castelli (Barnard), topic TBA

April 2010 - Graduate Student Conference, details soon to come!


For further information about PSCO please see our website, http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/

Good topic. And don't even get me started on "apocrypha" and "pseudepigrapha."