The following is available online here
Re-Writing the Bible: Devotion, Diatribe and Dialogue
14th-15th June 2010
University of Glasgow
Keynote panellists include Michael Schmidt, Michael Symmons-Roberts,
Kei Miller, Sara Maitland and Michelene Wandor.
“…there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’.”
- Terry Eagleton
A recent exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art consisted of a bible, laid open alongside a supply of pens, with the invitation, “If you feel you’ve been excluded from the Bible, please feel free to find a way to write yourself back in.” The comments scribbled in the margins—and the very notion of ‘writing in the Bible’—became the subject of a widespread controversy, resulting in the gallery’s decision to place this bible inside a perspex cube, effectively sealing it off and protecting it from what might be deemed ‘undesirable’ commentary. Visitors were still invited to write comments, but now they were written on sheets of paper that were then selected by gallery staff and inserted between the bible’s pages.
In light of this very present debate, Re-Writing the Bible: Devotion, Diatribe and Dialogue invites poets, writers, and scholars to engage with interdisciplinary questions surrounding the phenomena of retellings or revisions of Bible in creative writing. These retellings have a heritage that, arguably, starts within the books of the Bible itself and stretches across many literatures and traditions; poets and writers in every age filter biblical themes and images through the
focus of their own period and practice. Dante, Milton, Bunyan, Blake, Yeats, Owen, H.D, Plath, Kinsella, Hill; the list is long, diverse, and continues to grow.
This symposium asks why contemporary writers have chosen to rework this particular source text, and what stances they have taken towards it: faithful, using creative writing as a means of prayerful reflection or theological exegesis? Or furious, a railing against the Bible’s injustices and absences? Or a mixture of both, a sometimes difficult, sometimes delightful kind of dialogue? If every reading is also a re-writing, then it follows that every re-writing is also a reading, and for this reason many biblical scholars are fascinated by the literary ‘afterlives’ of the scriptures, the ways in which the Bible is sustained by creative imaginations in cultural settings and times very distant from its own writing and compilation.
We are seeking 20-minute papers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including but not limited to: literature, theology, biblical studies, critical and cultural theory, history, politics, and so on. We will consider papers on all forms of ‘creative writing’: poetry, novel, short story, sermon, liturgy, prayers, songs, political writing, theatre, and so on. Our emphasis is on twentieth and twenty-first century works, but we will also consider abstracts on rewritings from other periods. We would be particularly interested in papers looking at spaces that often go unexplored by research in retelling and revisioning, such as biblical romance novels, evangelical speculative fiction, biblical archetypes in autobiography, contemporary liturgy, or popular music. There is the possibility that proceedings will be published.
Please send abstracts (approx. 200 words) to rewritingbible2010@gmail.com, by no later than 19th April 2010.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
American Academy of Religion proposal for a panel to discuss Material Scripture
The following is the text of the proposal we turned in this week to the AAR. We are hopeful the committee will pick it up and let us do the panel. Keep fingers crossed.
From well before the advent of movable-type printing techniques, the Holy Bible has been a marketed object. This fact has only become more apparent in recent decades, with the rise of Bibles increasingly tailored to demographics and identity.
This panel will explore the physical forms that Scripture takes, as it is presented to readers in various iterations as a printed artifact. Thus the phrase, “Material Scripture,” describes a practice of inquiry that seeks to examine the culture of mass-market Bibles in North America by analyzing the Bibles themselves.
Raymond Williams’s argument, that “we cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special and distinct laws,” became the kernel for a method of literary criticism known as “cultural materialism.” This method, most visibly applied to the field of Shakespeare studies through the publication of Dollimore and Sinfeld’s Political Shakespeare (1985), has been adopted, and adapted, in recent years by a group of biblical scholars and theologians. Working under a variety of names, including “Iconic Books,” “Material Religion” and “Material Scripture,” these scholars are creating an international dialogue as to the various methodologies and practicalities of this “materialist” approach to biblical criticism.
This panel proposes to draw together several of the active scholars in this growing field of inquiry. We are at a point where it is appropriate that our discussions have a wider level of participation and become more public. Thus we are proposing this panel as a forum for a series of differing but complementary examples of “materialist” approaches to scripture.
A mass-produced Bible is both highly designed and, to an ever-increasing degree, a “designer” object. Published Bibles that reflect the demographics of certain aspects of American culture and lifestyle preferences are becoming prevalent in the marketplace, and this trend is not necessarily well addressed by the current methods of biblical criticism. In this panel, Brent Plate, Timothy Beal, and David Dault will offer varying perspectives on a more “materialist” approach to the printed Bible. These explorations of the physicality and genealogy of printed Bibles open up avenues of ideological and theological critique that stretch far back into the history of modern versions of Scripture and into the history of Western print culture itself. Dori Parmenter will respond, and James Watts will chair the proceedings.
The panelists, and their projects, are as follows:
S. Brent Rodriguez Plate (Hamilton College), “Looking at Words” – Typeface and page design matters. The matter (i.e., materiality and thus visuality) of words is as important as the semantics of them. “The Word” in Gothic font means one thing. “The Word” in Helvetica means something quite different. The presentation includes two key points. First, printed words are images, and the so-called Word-Image split ignores the visuality of script, typeface, and layout. Second, interpretation is emotional and affective. There can then be no clear-cut distinction between the semantic dimensions of texts and the iconic and performative dimensions. The rationality of semantics is not separable from the experiential appearance of words. They impact us emotionally, rationally, and, usually, subliminally.
Timothy K. Beal (Case Western Reserve University), “The Materiality of the Bible as Icon” – This multimedia presentation will incorporate a series of cultural representations of the Bible. The initial part of the presentation will involve a montage of images from film and video that demonstrate how the physical presence of the Bible in such representations can function in a totemic or iconic fashion. A brief theoretical reflection upon and discussion of the montage will follow. In this discussion, Beal will examine how the “cultural iconicity” of the Bible seems to be able to contain the plural materialities of Scripture — and how far that iconicity can be stretched to include new and radically different material forms.
David Dault (Christian Brothers University), “From Cultural Materialism to Material Scripture: Developing a Functional Methodology” – This paper will take a step back from the practices of material criticism represented by the first two papers, and offer an analysis of the developing process of material biblical criticism. “Material Scripture” will be presented as an ethically based ideological critique of the practice of"embedding" theologies and hermeneutic guidance into the visual and paratextual corpus of published Bibles, and some initial methodologies for its practice will be identified.
Response to the presentations will come from Dori Parmenter (Spalding University), and the session will be chaired by James Watts (Syracuse University), both of whom have worked in developing the “Iconic Scriptures” project, based at Syracuse University, which has approached a similar range of concerns with a different set of methodologies and assumptions. The inclusion of this alternative approach will, it is hoped, lead to a rich and generative discussion of the wider issues at stake in these disparate approaches to scripture.
Abstract
A mass-produced Bible is both highly designed and, to an ever-increasing degree, a “designer” object. Published Bibles that reflect the demographics of certain aspects of American culture and lifestyle preferences are becoming prevalent in the marketplace, and this trend is not necessarily well addressed by the current methods of biblical criticism. In this panel, Brent Plate, Timothy Beal, and David Dault will offer varying perspectives on a more “materialist” approach to the printed Bible. These explorations of the physicality and genealogy of printed Bibles open up avenues of ideological and theological critique that stretch far back into the history of modern versions of Scripture and into the history of Western print culture itself. Dori Parmenter will respond and James Watts will chair the session.
From well before the advent of movable-type printing techniques, the Holy Bible has been a marketed object. This fact has only become more apparent in recent decades, with the rise of Bibles increasingly tailored to demographics and identity.
This panel will explore the physical forms that Scripture takes, as it is presented to readers in various iterations as a printed artifact. Thus the phrase, “Material Scripture,” describes a practice of inquiry that seeks to examine the culture of mass-market Bibles in North America by analyzing the Bibles themselves.
Raymond Williams’s argument, that “we cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice, in such a way as to make them subject to quite special and distinct laws,” became the kernel for a method of literary criticism known as “cultural materialism.” This method, most visibly applied to the field of Shakespeare studies through the publication of Dollimore and Sinfeld’s Political Shakespeare (1985), has been adopted, and adapted, in recent years by a group of biblical scholars and theologians. Working under a variety of names, including “Iconic Books,” “Material Religion” and “Material Scripture,” these scholars are creating an international dialogue as to the various methodologies and practicalities of this “materialist” approach to biblical criticism.
This panel proposes to draw together several of the active scholars in this growing field of inquiry. We are at a point where it is appropriate that our discussions have a wider level of participation and become more public. Thus we are proposing this panel as a forum for a series of differing but complementary examples of “materialist” approaches to scripture.
A mass-produced Bible is both highly designed and, to an ever-increasing degree, a “designer” object. Published Bibles that reflect the demographics of certain aspects of American culture and lifestyle preferences are becoming prevalent in the marketplace, and this trend is not necessarily well addressed by the current methods of biblical criticism. In this panel, Brent Plate, Timothy Beal, and David Dault will offer varying perspectives on a more “materialist” approach to the printed Bible. These explorations of the physicality and genealogy of printed Bibles open up avenues of ideological and theological critique that stretch far back into the history of modern versions of Scripture and into the history of Western print culture itself. Dori Parmenter will respond, and James Watts will chair the proceedings.
The panelists, and their projects, are as follows:
S. Brent Rodriguez Plate (Hamilton College), “Looking at Words” – Typeface and page design matters. The matter (i.e., materiality and thus visuality) of words is as important as the semantics of them. “The Word” in Gothic font means one thing. “The Word” in Helvetica means something quite different. The presentation includes two key points. First, printed words are images, and the so-called Word-Image split ignores the visuality of script, typeface, and layout. Second, interpretation is emotional and affective. There can then be no clear-cut distinction between the semantic dimensions of texts and the iconic and performative dimensions. The rationality of semantics is not separable from the experiential appearance of words. They impact us emotionally, rationally, and, usually, subliminally.
Timothy K. Beal (Case Western Reserve University), “The Materiality of the Bible as Icon” – This multimedia presentation will incorporate a series of cultural representations of the Bible. The initial part of the presentation will involve a montage of images from film and video that demonstrate how the physical presence of the Bible in such representations can function in a totemic or iconic fashion. A brief theoretical reflection upon and discussion of the montage will follow. In this discussion, Beal will examine how the “cultural iconicity” of the Bible seems to be able to contain the plural materialities of Scripture — and how far that iconicity can be stretched to include new and radically different material forms.
David Dault (Christian Brothers University), “From Cultural Materialism to Material Scripture: Developing a Functional Methodology” – This paper will take a step back from the practices of material criticism represented by the first two papers, and offer an analysis of the developing process of material biblical criticism. “Material Scripture” will be presented as an ethically based ideological critique of the practice of"embedding" theologies and hermeneutic guidance into the visual and paratextual corpus of published Bibles, and some initial methodologies for its practice will be identified.
Response to the presentations will come from Dori Parmenter (Spalding University), and the session will be chaired by James Watts (Syracuse University), both of whom have worked in developing the “Iconic Scriptures” project, based at Syracuse University, which has approached a similar range of concerns with a different set of methodologies and assumptions. The inclusion of this alternative approach will, it is hoped, lead to a rich and generative discussion of the wider issues at stake in these disparate approaches to scripture.
Abstract
A mass-produced Bible is both highly designed and, to an ever-increasing degree, a “designer” object. Published Bibles that reflect the demographics of certain aspects of American culture and lifestyle preferences are becoming prevalent in the marketplace, and this trend is not necessarily well addressed by the current methods of biblical criticism. In this panel, Brent Plate, Timothy Beal, and David Dault will offer varying perspectives on a more “materialist” approach to the printed Bible. These explorations of the physicality and genealogy of printed Bibles open up avenues of ideological and theological critique that stretch far back into the history of modern versions of Scripture and into the history of Western print culture itself. Dori Parmenter will respond and James Watts will chair the session.
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