Writing/Reading Jeremiah

Call For Papers: The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group serves as a space for new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. We welcome all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Our manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn. In 2020, the Writing/Reading Jeremiah section will have two sessions. These sessions will consist of a combination of invited papers as well as papers selected in response to the Call to Papers. In the first session "Rage and Resilience,” we call for papers that explore anger as a survival strategy in the book of Jeremiah. This includes reflection on the various representations of divine and human anger throughout Jeremiah, considering notions such as the harmful effects of pent-up anger, the therapeutic or cathartic nature of anger, the relationship of anger to justice in a context of injustice, and finally, the association of anger with the hope for a better future. For the second session, “Jeremiah in Conversation with Ezekiel,” we will, together with the Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel section, co-sponsor an open session that reflects on the literary relationship between Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Beyond aspects of the historical sequence of these books, papers that explore textual, thematic, and imaginal relationships that pursue implications for reading these books separately or as a whole would be highly desired. Additionally, we encourage papers that pursue creative analyses of intertextual relationships and the payoff of these links in different contexts.

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