Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible

Call For Papers: This year we welcome proposals for two themed sessions. The first of these is a co-sponsored panel with the AAR's History of Christianity Unit, which represents a welcome and unprecedented opportunity. The location and date of our meeting further prompts us to consider the hemispheric and transatlantic linguistic dimensions of contact, as 2019 represents the 450-year anniversary of the publication of La Biblia del Oso (The Bear Bible), the first Spanish-language translation of the Bible which was published in 1569 in Basel, Switzerland by the exiled monk Casiodoro de Reina. His fellow monk Cipriano de Valera, revised his work, culminating in the 1602 Reina y Valera Bible. It looms as large in the memory and culture of Spanish-speaking Protestantism as does the 1611 King James translation in English-speaking Protestantism. In keeping with the theme of encounters, we invite papers that explore the history of sacred text making, translating, and reception history within communities in and around the hispanophone world. The second session will focus on pedagogy. We invite papers that engage reception and teaching. Papers in the session might 1) recount and analyze an instance in teaching in which a consideration of reception has a significant impact on the understanding of a biblical text or texts in the classroom; 2) offer reflections on how one's thinking about reception emerges from pedagogical experience (eg. how did a question or issue raised in a class help you think about your own reception research?); and/or 3) describe an instance in which reception highlighted, created, or mitigated what struck students as a particularly troubling dimension of a biblical text or texts (eg depictions of sexual violence; expressions of anti-semitism; the privileging of able-bodiedness, etc.). We will also have at least one open session: proposals are welcome on any aspect of the Bible's reception history. For the open sessions our preference is for papers that do not focus on

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