Duke is Well Represented at AAR/SBL

A number of GPR students and faculty will be presenting in the AAR/SBL to be held in Denver, Colorado November 17-20. The annual conference of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature is perhaps the most important conference of the year for those in the field of Religious Studies.  More than 1,200 events—academic sessions, additional meetings, receptions, tours, and workshops—will be offered at this annual conference. 

Graduate Program in Religion students who plan to present include: 

Diana Abernethy (9th year Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) - "Jonathan as a Capable but Not Chosen Successor: How the Narrative Sequence of 1 Samuel 13–15 Reveals the Theological Foundation of Israel’s Monarchy"

Torang Asadi will respond to a panel on “Emerging Religious Communities.” She will also present "The New Age Considered: A Response" and "Religious Precarity and the Immigrant Experience: A Response" at the American Anthropological Association Annual Conference in San Jose, California in November.

Hunter Bandy (8th Islamic Studies) - "Recovering the Marghūb al-qulūb of Ṣadr Jahān Ṭabasī: Iranian Sufism, Deccan Shīʿism, and the Destiny of a Deccan Sultanate"

Daniel Becerra (6th year Early Christianity) - "Cardiac Discourse in the Bible and Book of Morman"

Adam Booth (3rd year New Testament) - "Paul among the Physicians: 1 Tim 2:15 and Salvation in a Context of Contested Health Claims." Also presiding over SBL Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World Section / Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World Section.

Michael Grigoni (5th year Christian Theological Studies) - "The Gun and the Flesh of the World: Toward a Phenomenology of Christian Handgun Ownership"

Matthew Harber (5th year Hebrew Bible/Old Testment) - "The Benevolence of Job as a Literary Tradition in the Testament of Job"

Nathan Hershberger (2nd year Christian Theological Studies) - "Patient Apocalypticism and the Syriac Tradition: Political Theology in Ephrem the Syrian, Mar Qardagh, and Giwargis Warda"

Jonathan Homrighausen (1st year Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) - "My Beloved Is Mine: Song of Songs in Contemporary Jewish Ketubot"

Ryan Juskus (4th year Christian Theological Studies) - "The Visible and the Invisible in Coal Country: Subterranean Possibilities for Concerted Action across Racialized, Religious, and Regional Borders"

Ian Mills (4th year New Testament) - “Unripe Figs”: Isho’dad’s Diatessaron and the Original Language of Tatian’s Gospel

Julie Newberry (5th year New Testament) - "Joy in the Lukan Infancy Narrative: The Emotional Overtones of Zechariah's Speech(lessness)"

Andrew R. Rillera (3rd year New Testament) - "Tertium Genus or Dyadic Unity? Ecclessiology as Soteriology in Ephesians"

Laura Robinson (4th year New Testament) - "Childbearing, Liminal States, and Mark."

Elizabeth Schrader (2nd year Early Christianity) - "Rabbonni,' which means Lord: Narrative Variants in John 20:16"

Nathan Tilley (3rd year Early Christianity) - "Erotic Pedagogy in Gregory of Nyssa's First Homily on the Lord's Prayer," "Disciplinary Mechanisms in Basil of Caesarea’s Great Asketikon?"

Erin Galgay Walsh (7th year Early Christianity) - "Vanishing Women, Lingering Voices: Wrestling with Representations of Gendered Speech in Greek and Syriac Poetry," "The Afterlives of Isaiah 58:7 in Early Christian and Rabbinic Literature."  Presiding over SBL Politics and Pedagogy.

Graduate Program in Religion recent alumni who plan to present include (not a comprehensive list): 

Jamie Brummitt (UNC Wilmington) - "Digital Technologies of Death, Commemoration, and Mourning"

Brennan Keegan (Randolph College) - "Inventing American Nationalism in the Rocky Mountain West"

Daniel Stulac (Duke University) - "The Destroyed City as Grazing Space: Interpretive Possibilities in Isaiah 5:17, 17:2, 27:10, and 32:14"

Marvin Wickware (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago) - "In the Wake of Afro-Pessimism: Black Flesh, Wake Work, the Hold, and the Question of Sexual Difference" and "Black Reality as Subversive Fantasy: White Supremacy and Black Brilliance in Get Out and Black Panther"

Saadia Yacoob (Williams College) - "Male Desire and Female Desirability: The Male as Knowing Subject of Islamic Law" and "'Not Every Mujtahid is Correct': Ibn Idrīs al-Ijilī and the Genre of 'The Judge's Protocol'"

Graduate Program in Religion faculty who plan to present include: 

Jeremy Begbie - "Incarnation, Creation and New Creation: What T. F. Torrance offers to a Theological Re-visioning of the Arts"

Luke Bretherton - "Two theses towards a political theology of populism" and "Public Theology as Missiology: A response to Elaine Graham"

Marc Brettler - "Reflections from Krister's Academic Neighbor." Respondent to Rebecca Wollenberg's "The Book That Changed: Narratives of Ezran Authorship as Late Antique Biblical Criticism." Panelist "A Review of Stephen L. Cook, Ezekiel 38–48."  SBL Council.

Stephen B. Chapman - "Delitzsch’s Fourth Edition" (theme Isaiah–Balancing Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches)

Mark Goodacre - "Why Not Matthew’s Use of Luke?"

Richard B. Hays (recent emeritus) - "Panel Review: A New Testament Theology by Craig Blomberg (Baylor UP, 2018)"

Richard M. Jaffe - "Buddhism and National Security in 20th Century America"

J. Ross Wagner - "Isaiah 6 and Its Wirkungsgeschichte in Second-Temple Literature"

Brittany Wilson - "The Aroma of Prayer: Smell, Space, and Sacrificial Praxis in Luke-Acts." Presiding over SBL Book of Acts Section.

Lauren F. Winner - "Eighth Annual Analytic Theology Lecture: The Eucharist, Perfection, and Damage" and "Reception"

Joseph Winters - "The Hole/Hold between Optimism and Pessimism: Spillers, Sharpe, and the Wake of Black Flesh"

Valerie Cooper is serving as a panelist for "Complicit Scholarship: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Religious Studies" and "Author Meets Critics: Anthony Pinn's When Colorblindness Isn’t the Answer: Humanism and the Challenge of Race (Pinchstone, 2017)."

One session at the AAR is devoted to "Conversation about and Celebration of the Work of Mary McClintock Fulkerson," so congratulations to her for this public recognition of her work. 

Ellen F. Davis will present at a pre-SBL event at Evangelical Theological Society “Holy Place: Precious, Fragile, Threatened” (Voice in American Theology and Culture), and lead a panel discussion on "Holy People, Holy Land: A Conversation with Ellen F. Davis on Agrarianism in the Old Testament."

Our congratulations to these scholars for having papers accepted, and our best wishes to them as they present them.