Conference

The overwhelming SBL

I have actually been in NOLA since Thursday. I spent my first few days meeting with old friends at Tulane and in Covington (where we lived for 6 years). (I took a few pictures that you can see here.)

So yesterday SBL started in earnest. Several folks have blogged or twittered about how busy and overwhelming SBL can be and how to get the most out of the experience. I have another suggestion: don’t twitter or blog about SBL. I say this knowing that I myself have twittered and blogged a good bit about SBL, but I find SBL busy enough without the added feeling of anxiety that I get knowing that I am not keeping up with the #SBL09 twitter feed and the numerous blog posts.

Wait! There is another one! What? Sorry I missed your paper I was busy trying to write a blog post about the last session.

Oy! Too much. So dear friends please excuse me if I don’t know have multiple updates this year. I will twitter, but mostly only if I am bored (but not always) and if I can find the time I will try and do a few blog updates, but don’t worry about keeping up with me. Just enjoy your SBL!

Now, to share just a couple of items from yesterday:

I enjoyed my first ever Sazarac with my friend and colleague from Tulane at the Old Roosevelt Hotel.
Had lunch at Bacco on Chartres – the best lunch in NOLA. $15 for 2 courses, with my friends and colleagues Paul Flesher and Rick Wright.
Had dinner with Doug Mangum (I wasn’t ignoring him, I was just building suspense) and Rick Wright.

(re)Settled in NOLA (and pictures from Katrina)

Nov 20th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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If you follow my twitter feed (and no reason you should, do you really want to know what I ate last night?) you would know that after some flight delays I landed in NOLA yesterday afternoon. Depending upon how long you have read this blog you may not know that I spend my first 9 years of employed life as a professor at Tulane University.

Yesterday I spent some time getting settled and then went out to get a wonderful meal with one of our grad students from Penn State. (Dante’s Kitchen is a great restaurant, reasonably priced and well worth a cab ride: http://danteskitchen.com/) We then walked around Tulane’s campus which is just a beautiful as ever. Today I will visit with some old friends and then the real SBL fun begins tomorrow morning. If the sessions I attend are very good the chances of tweets and posts will decline (I will be too engaged!) but if not…well, I might become the most prolific blogger in the Crescent City.

Entrance to our neighborhood following Katrina. Our neighbors were very proactive.

My paper will be on Monday in the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah joint session with Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Room: Studio 2 – M. I will be speaking about the use of Law in Ezra-Nehemiah to foster the recovery and restoration of Jerusalem (and Judaism) in comparison with the slow recovery of New Orleans and how modern clergy used Scripture to help their communities cope with loss and move forward.

Until then, if you are interested, some of my pictures from pre-post Katrina are here and from the first Mardi Gras post Hurricane Katrina are here and here.

SBL Section Title

Nov 19th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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Now that I am ensconced in my hotel room I have some time to glance through the conference program. So far one section title stood out enough to merit a comment (leaving aside the plethora of gratuitous use of “liminal”):

21-127 “Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible” - So these are women biblical scholars who are finding their way out of the addiction that is interpretation? (Reminded me of the cute/trite phrase I often here in Episcopal churches, “I am a recovering Catholic.”)

IOTS call for papers!

Sep 15th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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This came in the email as a reminder and boy did I need it! The deadline is TODAY! I am going to guess that since it was just sent out again we may have some leeway, but please submit them soon!

International Organization for Targum Studies
Sixth Meeting
HELSINKI, FINLAND
August 4-6, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 6th meeting of the IOTS will cover a wide range of topics related to
Targum Studies:

Philology;
Typology and Genre;
Translation Strategies and Theory;
Exegesis;
Theology;
Text-criticism and Manuscript Studies;
Relationship to Rabbinic Literature.

We are pleased to announce a call for short papers in any of these categories. Papers should be of twenty-minutes length, allowing ten additional minutes for discussion. The deadline for paper proposals is September 15, 2009, and March 1, 2010 for the submission of written abstracts.

DATE
The sixth meeting of the IOTS will be held from August 4-6, 2010 in conjunction with the XXth Congress of IOSOT, the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, and other specialized congresses (IOQS, IOSCS, IOMS), to be held from 1st to 6th August 2010 in Helnsinki, Finland. All information on these congresses, registration, accommodation, etc. can be found on http://www.helsinki.fi/teol/pro/iosot/abstracts/iosot.htm.

PAPER PROPOSALS
If you are interested in participating and presenting a paper, please send your proposal (title and/or subject of paper) to:

Dr. Willem Smelik,
willem.smelik@ucl.ac.uk / willem.smelik@gmail.com

Dept. of Hebrew and Jewish Studies
University College London
Foster Court, Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT

Please forward this call for papers to any student or scholar you think may
be interested.