Boundaries, Elves and Writing

Today a colleague of mine shared with me that he had seen a medieval Christian incantation to ward off elves. Besides the fact that I didn't realize that elves were something that someone would want or need to ward off (aren't they benevolent and beautiful?), I'm still tickled when I run across something that patently challenges our notions about what is "Christian" or "Pagan." The ways that individuals and communities blend, bend and borrow seemingly disparate and immutable categories, beliefs and practices is simply fascinating to me. Maybe this is one of the reasons I enjoy studying religion. I find the mixing of kinds and the breaking of boundaries enjoyable in my scholarship as well.

While I was trained as a New Testament scholar, which is a field known for its sometimes strict boundaries, I entered the field (my doctoral studies) with a pretty broad range of interests. Unlike some of my colleagues, I didn't follow a neat trajectory from college to grad work in NT. After dong an undergraduate degree in philosophy (even though what I really wanted to study was art) and spending some time working for an urban community organizing, faith-based non profit, I graduated with little sense of a specific career path. Yet, a love of literature and existential philosophy pushed me to think about grad schools. When I applied to masters degree programs, however, I applied to a variety of programs ranging from philosophy programs to masters in divinity. I went where the money was (i.e. a full ride fellowship)--divinity school. Even there I didn't entirely focus on NT or biblical texts, even though a NT professor I had the first semester began serving as an unofficial mentor. I continued my affair with the melancholy Dane, worked on my art, did some congregational analysis, along with studying Greek and Hebrew. As I thought about Ph. D. programs, I decided to do NT since I thought it would tether me to a single era/ set of literature from which I could then explore a variety of questions, methods, interpretations, ideas, images, etc, etc.

But, as is typically the case, grad school meant focus, even though I was also encouraged by some of my mentors to push on the boundaries of the field. (At least to some extent.) I embraced conceptual metaphor theory and cognitive linguistics as methodological tools and I sought to engage not only ancient, but also medieval and modern feminist interpretations of the text in my work. Still, for the sake "finishing" my dissertation I ended up with a fairly traditional piece of work. Since then my scholarship largely has been confined to more traditional NT work. It's been focused on the ancient world and employs the theoretical primarily as a tool for explicating the text. It's fine, but not the creative blend of interests that followed me into graduate school.

More recently, however, I've been trying to recapture the fun that I had when I first entered academia. I used to enjoy odd pairings, crossing disciplinary boundaries, employing the theoretical as I engaged the concrete. I want to recapture those impulses--as long as my fears don't get the best of me. I've written one essay that should come out shortly that really does push these sorts of boundaries, as I engage Revelation's image of the Whore, ancient and modern understandings of prostitution and queer theory. And now I'm working on the book that I wanted my dissertation to be, which is an exploration of how real readers have envisioned Revelation's city-bride imagery, the image of the New Jerusalem. This requires, obviously, engaging the works of interpreters who are not necessarily within my field of expertise (NT). In fact, I'm engaging the writings of two medieval women and the multi-media works of two modern women. This definitely requires me to do a lot of work in areas that push the boundaries of my knowledge, but it is, quite simply, fun and invigorating work. Still, there are times when I worry that I'm pushing too far. How will my colleagues in other disciplines feel? Am I stepping on any toes? Will anyone understand what I'm trying to do? I try to approach my work with humility. I realize that I'm not a medieval historian, art historian, church historian, theorist on modern American hermeneutics, etc, etc, etc. I'm not and I'm not trying to be. Still, I would like to be in conversations with other disciplines and scholars. I think these conversations can help me be a better New Testament scholar, a better reader of texts. Engaging a variety of conversations and media can, hopefully, make me a better interpreter of the subtle ways that texts challenge and inspire. So, as I move forward with my work, I resolve to embrace the challenge of working across disciplines, the possibility of engaging multiple intellectual senses. I want to be a little like the elvish incantation--breaking boundaries and challenging people's perceptions. I'll try not to worry too much . . .

Hooray! My Student Had a Thought Today!

So the title of this post really isn't supposed to be "snarky" or facetious. I am genuinely excited about my student having "a thought" today.

I guess that I should start by explaining that I am participating in a Summer Undergraduate Research program with one of my advisees. The program is intended to give students a chance at doing research side-by-side with a faculty person as she does her own research over the summer. The model, like so many undergraduate research (UR) programs, is based upon how work happens in the sciences. It assumes that the faculty person has a project that a student might be able to participate in/ help with. My sense is that natural and social scientists might be able to isolate a small part of their own research for a student to expand upon, verify, analyze, etc. Hopefully, this will be beneficial for student and faculty person. Based upon this model of UR, our university encourages students to apply for (with approval of participating faculty members of course) a chance to do "hands on" and "engaged" summer research. The brochures for these types of programs almost always show student and mentor in matching lab coats looking through microscopes or pouring bright blue fluid into beakers. Whatever they are doing, they have the lab coats.

UR in the Humanities looks a little different. First, we don't normally wear lab coats. Total bummer. Second, Humanities research isn't always so active and faculty research projects are not usually something that we can share with students. In my own field, New Testament, students do not have the language training that would make it possible for them to help me. And, I don't feel like teaching enough sections of koine Greek to get students up to speed. Oh my. Thus, students who work with me in the summer, usually end up developing their own, independent research project. This, of course, involves a lot of reading. Thus, if "University Relations" came to my office to shoot photos for the Summer UR program brochure, they would capture student and faculty member sitting somewhat in the same vicinity, reading, writing, staring, face-booking, chocolate eating, reading, note-taking, face-booking, sitting, writing . . . you get the picture. It's just not "sexy" like the lab coats.

So, back to the thought. My student is doing research on space, temples and visionary texts (i.e. Ezekiel and Revelation). For the past couple of weeks she's been reading the texts in different translations, taking notes in commentaries, looking for articles, face-booking, taking notes, reading, sitting, etc. Today, however, in the midst of all of this, she called out from the table outside of my office, "I just realized something!" She was so excited. She was absolutely giddy. She explained, "I just connected Ezekiel's use of blah, blah, blah, blah! I can't believe it!!" (I don't want to give away her thought.) By looking at the text, poking around the sources, playing around with the text, she had come up with an insight on the text that was genuinely her idea. A thought. She had a thought. Now, the chances are good that others have had similar thoughts about the text, even though her thought is not something that we've seen everywhere. But in UR that doesn't really matter (at least from my perspective). What matters is that she processed the text and sources and came up with an interesting idea about the text, an idea that is her own.

Now, don't get me wrong, I would never say that she came up with this idea 100% on her own. She's taken classes related to her topic, she's read articles, she's talked with me about the text (and of course that's really made her super smart), she's been in conversation with others, etc. In other words, her thought does not emerge out of isolation. Still, she has processed all of her interactions with the text, with others, etc in her own way and it has become her own. In fact, I think that this is what she was really excited about--she now had an idea that could argue, demonstrate, explain in her own terms. This became evident as we shared lunch with a couple other people who are on campus doing work. She shared her thought with them and answered their questions over pizza. Other scholars might be used as evidence or as conversation partners, but she seemed to see herself as the authority on this particular idea. It was kind of marvelous. Because on this day, I got to see my student have a thought, a thought that really seemed to empower her.

Of course, I hope my student has more moments like this, especially since I'll be working with her over the next two years. But, I'm really happy that I got to experience this moment. Sometimes I wonder why I bother going in to the office every day of the summer "just" to work alongside my student. Some faculty just meet up occasionally with their students for "check-ins." But, at times like these, I have a little glimpse of why I come in during summer and why I do what I do in general. It's a good experience.

Teaching Imperfection

I'm a bit of a self-help book junkie, although I'm pretty picky about which books I buy/ like/ admit to reading. Currently I'm reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown (published by Hazelden, naturally). The fact that I'm even mentioning it means that I like it. I love Brown's writing style, which is self-reflective and pretty funny. Brown, a prof at University of Houston, researches shame and uses her own experiences of dealing with shame to help her reader work through issues related to perfectionism. I like it and am finding it really insightful.

One of the things that Brown talks about is how embracing our imperfections becomes a way of becoming more compassionate and courageous. As the title of her book suggests, these are the gifts of imperfection. In some sense, this is what I call a "no-duh" observation. It's so obvious and rings true. Still, my tendency is to try to hide my imperfections, shake them off, make light of them, secretly be ashamed of them or obsess over them. (The last option is my favorite course of action.) What if I did embrace them? What might my life look like? I definitely think I would be much happier, but the thought is somewhat intimidating.

As I've been thinking about imperfections and how to embrace them, I noticed something about how I work with my undergraduate research (UR) students. My university is very excited about UR and does a lot to support it. I've been actively involved in mentoring students, including mentoring them over the summer for intensive projects, and have even published a bit on mentoring UR in my field. The students who sign up for UR, especially the summer programs, tend to be perfectionists. They are honor students who take 18-20 hours a semester, volunteer for countless service projects, travel abroad at the drop of a hat, work part time on campus, get straight "A"s, juggle fire batons, rescue small animals from burning buildings, invent new technologies to save the world, etc. Most of them have never had to rewrite a paper, had a professor challenge their perspectives or had to toss out a thesis on which they've been working. But this is exactly what the UR experience is about. They sign up for extended research projects and rarely do they realize that a bulk of the experience will involve dead ends, reworking, rewriting, rethinking--imperfections.

So, how do I deal with my perfectionist students who are coming face to face with their imperfections? I remind them that no one is perfect and that research is about false starts, second chances and "shitty first-drafts" (to quote Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird). I tell them that no one expects perfection, that the idea is to think about a problem or topic in a new way as a means of furthering the conversation not ending the conversation. I even tell them stories about my own writing mishaps, published mistakes and the like, as well as the stories shared with me by own mentors. "Look at us! We're all imperfect and incomplete! That's part of being humans and scholars!" In other words, when sitting down with a student to talk about the difficulties of research and the reality of imperfection and failure, I show compassion. I show compassion to my students! I'm living and experiencing what Brown discusses, using the gifts of my own imperfection to show kindness toward others and to mentor others. Maybe now that I see this, I can work on channeling some of that kindness toward myself.

Did I Stutter?

Talk about procrastination while writing a dissertation. As I was supposedly trying to finish my diss, I had the crazy idea that I should start a comic strip and online zine. It had various names, "Did I Stutter?" and "AnxietyGirl" being the top two contenders. Recently, I stumbled across some of my illustrations. This one is still relevant and kind of cracks me up. Enjoy!

Dismantling Anti-Jewish Thinking in Intro to the NT?

As someone who teaches New Testament in a mid-sized liberal arts college, one of the biggest challenges I face is the insidiousness of anti-Jewish perspectives among many of my Christian, even culturally Christian, students. Students are not overtly anti-Semitic--they don't use slanderous language or ethnic stereo-types. Yet, when they read the New Testament, the Gospels in particular, they have an incredibly difficult time understanding that the depiction of Jewish groups in these texts are 1) the result of intra-Jewish conversation and conflict and 2) part of the authors' literary strategies. Students (including some adults I've had the opportunity to teach in church settings) tend to embrace the gnostic/ Marcionite perspective regarding the character of the divine. I can't even count how often I've heard a student say something along the lines of, "The God of the NT is so loving in comparison to the God of the OT." In other words, "the God" of the OT is described as vengeful, unloving, bloodthirsty, etc. My first response, as someone who's research is on the Apocalypse, is, "Have you read the Book of Revelation?" Yet, no matter how often I remind my class that "the God" of the NT is the same as the divine of the Jewish Scriptures and writings, from an early Christian and Christian perspective, there are always students who can not or will not shake this dichotomy. A-J Levine, in a speech at UNC-Greensboro a few years ago, explained that she responds to this by referencing the 23rd Psalm, an oft-memorized passage in Christian Sunday Schools: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want/ He biddeth me to lie down in green pastures/ He restoreth my soul." (Of course, when I grew up we memorized this in the KJV. Old school, represent!) Even this sometimes falls on deaf ears, as students explain that in "most of the OT" God is a big meany.

So for many students (of course not all!) the multiple depictions of the divine in the Hebrew Bible are diminished into an image of an ogre and the depictions of a wrathful and justice-seeking God of the NT are dismissed as marginal. Revelation is at the end of the canon for a reason . . . it's not really meant to be read or taken seriously. (Of course, for some students, these perspectives are held deeply because they've heard them all their lives, from church pulpits, Sunday school teachers, etc. But that's a whole other can of worms.)

In light of this, I do try to find avenues for dismantling anti-Jewish thinking in my NT courses. In fact, this is one of the "unstated goals" of my Introduction to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature course. But as I write this, I am struck by the fact that, perhaps, I need to be more upfront with this goal. Maybe it is time to name this, along with uncovering how NT texts have been used to justify slave-holding and to oppress women, as one of my central student learning outcomes. In doing this, I think I also need to find new strategies for challenging these perspectives, new strategies for unsettling this simplistic and hurtful thinking. This is one thing I hope to think about this summer as I rework my Intro syllabus. Hopefully, I can begin to share some of these here.

Books to guide me as I explore these questions:

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress.
• Terrance Donaldson, Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Traditions.
  
• Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.

And, of course, I'm always happy for suggestions and insights.

Apocalyptic Wordle

A word cloud based upon a forthcoming article. If you click on the image it will take you to larger version.