July 9-11, 2006
Free and Open to the Public
Convened by Prof Susannah Heschel
Funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation
Ink and blood are two major emblems of self-definition for religious
communities that link themselves as much through community, ethnicity, or race
as through doctrine and history. Religious power is expressed through blood
(e.g., martyrdom) as well as ink (ideology), and both blood and language are
vehicles for communication and covenant with the divine. The presumed divine
wish for human blood is negotiated through texts, which are in turn united in
incarnation, as the word becomes flesh or the blood is presumed to be holy, to
be returned to God through sacrificial offering. Participants in "Ink and
Blood: Textuality and the Human" will address issues related to race,
martyrdom, hermeneutics, and nationalism as refracted through Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. The conference is financed by a generous grant from
the Ford Foundation for the purpose of reconceptualizing Jewish Studies and
improving relations between the fields of Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies.
All lectures and seminars are free and open to the public. For further
information, please contact Meredyth Morley, 646-8172.
Tentative conference program schedule:
Sunday, July 9, 4-6 pm: Plenary Session (Rockefeller 2, Rockefeller
Center)
Moderator: Gene Garthwaite, Dartmouth College
- Angelika Neuwirth, Humboldt University, "Biblical and
Islamic Mnemonics in Contemporary Near Eastern Literature and Art"
- Hartmut Lehmann, Dartmouth College, "The German
Protestants' Quest for National Salvation
Monday, July 10, 9 am to 12 noon (1930 Rm, Rockefeller Center)
- Denise Buell, Williams College, "Spilled Ink and
Blood: Modern Racism Meets Early Christian Collective
Self-Descriptions"
- Kathleen Biddick,Temple University, "Martyrial
Times"
- Lisa Lampert, University of California, San
Diego, "To prove whose blood is reddest: Rethinking Race in The
Merchant of Venice"
1 pm to 4 pm (1930 Rm, Rockefeller Center)
- Gregory Kaplan, Rice University, "The
Biopolitical in Martin Buber's Conception of Life"
- J. Kameron Carter, Duke University, "Oriental Jesus
Occidental Paul: Race, Myth, and the Conflicted Status of Jewish Flesh in
Nineteenth-Century German Biblical Scholarship"
- Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College, "Blood, Breast,
and Kiss: Revelation and Gender in Jewish-Christian Contse"
4 pm to 6 pm: Plenary Session (Rockefeller 2, Rockefeller Center)
- Christina von Braun, Humboldt University, "Blood and
Ink"
- Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Hebrew University, "Metaphors
can Kill: From Loving Jerusalem to Loving in Jerusalem"
Tuesday, July 11, 9 am to 12 noon (1930 Rm, Rockefeller Center)
- Asad Ahmed, University of Chicago, "Genealogies,
Prophetic Sayings, and the Iconisation of the Prophet's Companions: The Case of
Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas"
- Andrew Newman, University of Edinburgh, "Text
and Textuality Then and Now: Reading 17th Century Religious Discourse in
Iran"
- Mark Cohen, Princeton University, "Maimonides' Code
and the Social and Economic Realities of his Time"
1 pm to 4 pm: The Political Migrations of Religious Identities (1930 Rm,
Rockefeller Center)
- Eran Kaplan, University of Cincinnati, "Between the
Pen and the Sword: Intellectuals and the Jewish National Movement"
- Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University, "Fanatic
Figures: The Circle of Scripture and the Problem of Primitivism in Modern
Culture"
- Maimuna Huq, University of South Carolina,
"Cultivating and Contesting Religious Subjectivity in Bangladesh: The
Politics of Commitment among Islamic Activist Women"
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