Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes
Call For Papers: We will hold three panels in 2018, all of which are open. First, with the Meals in the HB/OT and Its World program unit, we invite papers on the theme Sensing Food. This joint panel focuses on sensory aspects of the consumption and preparation of meals in the cultures of the ANE, Hebrew Bible, and Second Temple Judaism. Taste and smell may feature most prominently, but other sensory modalities are also implicated by the visuals, textures, sounds, and the like, that comprise meal experiences. We welcome papers that use various approaches (anthropological, philological, archaeological, etc.) to investigate the role of the senses in meal practices. How are the senses and food practices in these cultures mutually influential and constitutive? Second, with the Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity program unit, we will host a joint session on Sensescapes. We invite papers that consider texts that inform discussions of how people in antiquity use their senses to create or destroy space; how physical, imagined, and social spaces stimulate senses; or any topic which demonstrates a link between sense and space. Finally, we invite papers for a panel on Sensory Impairment in the Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and Early Christianity. Papers may consider: What assumptions appear to be made about sensory competency in these texts? How do they mark senses as altered or non-functional? What and how did such impairments "mean" in the larger culture and in terms of power structures? How does sensory impairment affect the way in which humans relate to one another and/or to deity/ies? Does it represent grounds for exclusion from participation in religious ritual, and communication with the divine more generally, or on the contrary, is it conducive to it? For all panels, the abstract should state the paper's thesis, outline the approach that will be taken, and identify the primary sources and examples to be discussed.
Program Unit Chairs
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