SBL/AAR Wrapup

One of the takeaways from this year's Biblioblogging panel at SBL is that I tend to over-think my blog posts, so I'm going to jump right in.

Overall, the weekend was a success. I had a promising interview for a job that really suits my skill-set and interdisciplinary tendencies (not to mention geographical preferences). My presentation, "Academic Busking: A New Paradigm for Distance Learning and Online Content Creation," was well received, and meshed much better than I expected it to into the lively discussion of academic blogs, self-branding, and content creation that ensued in the Blogging and Online Publications session.

I attended a number of interesting panels, especially in the Esotericism and Mysticism, Wisdom and Apocalyptic, and Pseudepigrapha groups, including a review session for Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1, edited by Jim Davila, Richard Bauckham, and Alexander Panayotov. (This marked the first time that I've been in the same room with the real John J. Collins, but no tears in the space-time continuum have been reported...) The question of the appropriateness of perpetuating the term "Old Testament pseudepigrapha" for a rather heterogenous, polyphyletic body of works came under discussion. The only real defense anybody had was "what else are we supposed to call them?" I can say that from the perspective of the job market, it would be nice to have a catch-all term for what I do that doesn't require scare quotes, so if anybody comes up with an answer, let me know.

The most important part of the conference was getting to meet people, some new, some I'd only known electronically. I am not at my best in crowds full of unfamiliar faces, but hopefully I've now established enough of a foundation that I can overcome the Yoghurt Paradox in the future.¹ I appreciate everyone being so welcoming when I suspect I spent much of the weekend looking like a frightened mammal.


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¹ "The Yoghurt Paradox" is my term for the difficulty of meeting new people if you don't already know people, much as you must already have a yoghurt starter to make yoghurt, or, according to m. Avot 5:6, you need tongs in order to forge tongs.²

² And yes, another thing that came up in the Blogging panel is that footnotes aren't really appropriate to blogging as a genre, but some things I can't give up!

SBL/AAR

I have arrived, somewhat later than I intended, at the SBL/AAR meeting in Baltimore. If you see a guy wearing a black frock coat with unnaturally red hair, that's probably me. Feel free to say hi, but don't be offended if I stare at your badge for a minute before responding. My brain can only hold so many faces at a time, so I may be a little overwhelmed.

Busk away!

My proposal for a presentation on "Academic Busking" (based on this post) for the SBL's Biblioblogging group has been accepted! Now I just have to come up with something worth saying by November.

SBL proposals

I submitted two paper proposals for this year's SBL. One is for the Biblioblogging group, and is based on the Academic Busking rant below. The other one—based on a seminar paper I wrote several years ago—is for the Pauline Epistles group, and it involves a reading of Galatians 3-4 from a perspective of temporal dualism and Roman adoption law. I had forgotten how good the paper was, and with a little polishing, it could be really impressive.¹

My experience at last year's SBL doesn't make me eager to go again, unless I'm presenting something, but it's in Baltimore this year, so I don't really have an excuse not to. It won't cost much, and if I need to escape, I can always just come home.

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¹     It's odd how many of my best papers (and the longest chapter of my dissertation) deal with Christian sources, considering I market myself as a Hebrew Bible specialist. I mean, in reality, my specialty involves a complex of Post-Exilic-to-pre-Rabbinic-Judaism-plus-early-Christianity that nobody has come up with a good name for. But there aren't a lot of jobs in that field, for that very reason. The traditional division of disciplines is arbitrary and artificial, but persistant. I have been applying for OT/HB positions, because I am more confident of my command of that material across the board. On the NT/EC side, I have decent chops in the historical and literary aspects, and I'm very strong in a few over-specific (usually heterodox) areas, but I feel shaky on the more theological angles. It does make me wonder if, next year, I should go both ways (heh) and apply for NT/EC posts as well. I mean, the worst that can happen is they reject me, and I've had plenty of practice at that.