I'm currently in the midst of what I'll call a research/ writing gap. I just finished a draft of chapter for my current project and I need to move on to the next chapter. I'd like to start this chapter now, however, I'm going to be traveling for a couple of weeks. I'll be on a research trip to Israel and Jordan where I'll be working on a project related to my teaching and not a project related to my writing. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to navigate this gap. I took a couple days to write a book review, but now that's completed and I am at loose ends again . . .
Maybe this is a good time to sit back and think about what I want out of the research trip. The program requires that each participant have a project that relates to the trip, which focuses on the area ruled by the Herodian dynasty during the Roman and Late Antique periods. It would be nice to have something publishable out of this, in fact.
I have proposed a project related to teaching the NT through material culture. I have articulated two specific foci within this broad topic.
The first set of research questions is related to a course I am currently developing entitled “Messiahs and Martyrs.” This course is intended to replace and improve upon a catalog course on “Jesus and the Gospels,” by offering an examination of first-century Messianic movements, an understanding that situates written texts within their historical and material milieu. The course will naturally address issues related to the Qumran community, as well as the controversies surrounding the events at Massada; however, it will also attend to the presence of the Roman Empire within Galilee and Jerusalem as way of encouraging students to think about Messianic movements as responses to other political/ religious/ social discourses. In particular, I am curious about the ways in which people living within the Herodian period may have imitated and appropriated aspects of Roman and/ or Hellenistic culture.
The second set of questions involves the ways in which gender, masculine and feminine, is regulated and represented in ancient Judea/ Galilee. I am curious to see the ways that space may have reflected gender norms and how images may or may not have been used to communicate particular gender ideals. I would try to think about the ways that this is similar to or different from what we see in Roman Italy. Additionally, I would be looking for visual clues to how people might have embraced and resisted such ideals. These types of questions would be incorporated into both my future research on gender in the ancient world and in my teaching, specifically a course I teach on gender, sex and family in early Christianity.
In addition to using material culture to explore these questions, I plan on working on a digital archive of images for teaching. In order to receive funding from my institution, I needed to put together a proposal related to my work in the classroom. Since I use images to teach, this seemed like a natural project.
My question in a nutshell is how material culture can be used to engage students in critical thinking about apocalyptic movements and gender construction?
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