As a retired faculty member, I am enjoying the freedom to
spend “full time” on research and writing, while also devoting more time to my
favorite “leisure” activities of cooking, hiking (high country wilderness trips
in the Sierra and Rocky Mountains), gardening, international travel, church
service projects, and environmental advocacy. But I also relish opportunities
to teach (short term) in various formal and informal settings, from church
classes to the semester I recently spent at the United Theological College in
Bangalore, India. At Garrett-Evangelical my
favorite teaching assignments were Hebrew language courses, intensive exegesis
of individual books (Genesis, Exodus, Amos, and Hosea), a course on women’s
religion in ancient Israel (“The Faith of Israel’s Daughters”), and the
Graduate Colloquium—the latter for the cross-disciplinary conversation I have
always relished. I also cherished the interaction with students in Introduction
to Ministry classes and Field Education groups.
My main writing project at the moment is a monograph on
Hebrew qedeshah, which is now nearing
completion (at least I’m on the final chapter). An article on one of the
extra-biblical texts treated in this study has just been published as
“Lucian’s Last Laugh: The Origins of ‘Sacred Prostitution’ at Byblos,” in Collected Communications to the XXth
Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament,
Helsinki 2010; eds. Hermann Michael Niemann and Matthias Augustin; Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 2011) 203-212.
What is exciting about my field? Its continuing expansion in
terms of participants, subjects of investigation, and interlocutors. Having
chaired the program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) on “The
Bible in Africa, Asia, and Latin America” for its first 5 years, I am heartened
to see scholars from these regions taking their place in increasing numbers within
the SBL programs and leadership, and new program units reflecting their
interests and experience, contributing to scholarly dialogue. But I also see increasing insularity in the face of this
proliferation of programs and perspectives, with dialogue becoming confined
within smaller circles. I am heartened to see increased participation of
European scholars in the SBL, which has brought new ferment as fundamentally differing
views on the dating and composition of the OT/HB writings clash. For me, this
scholarly ferment is both frustrating and energizing, a goad to re-examination
of familiar texts and interpretations, seeing the texts from new angles.
Dear Phyllis Bird,
ReplyDeleteI was at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe/Harvard when you were there in 1979. Your talk on images of the feminine in Old Testament theology and anthropology awakened me to the power of translations, especially biased through cultural lenses, such as undervaluing women. Even though that issue was far from my science and history of science work, I never forgot it.
I went on to 20+ years building and teaching women's studies at the University at Albany (bonniespanier.blogspot.com). Now retired to NW MI, I have reconnected with your field through Rabbi Chava Bahle (Jewish Renewal). Getting to what was probably really written way back is still liberating for me, a confirmed agnostic, as I find much to connect with philosophically and ethically in religious writings.
I just dug out my old list of Bunting colleagues and speakers, because I have never forgotten you and your talk.
Enjoy. Bonnie Spanier