In any given week of research I probably peruse scholarly articles and monographs of a dozen or more authors. Aside from the few whom I might personally know, the vast number of these authors are little more to names to me. I read, consider, accept or reject their arguments based on my opinion of their merits. While I recognize that there are actual people behind these arguments – and while I try to read the fruits of their labor generously – they largely remain simply names on a page. Their own stories are not relevant to the academic work of sorting, adjudicating, and building on their arguments. Yet every once a while an author has such a compelling backstory that it becomes difficult to simply ignore the person behind the argument. Gershom Scholem, for example, was such a force of nature that it is hard to separate the man from his writings. There are not many such scholars and I am sure that each academic has their own list. Of the hundreds or even thousands of authors a researcher might consider each year, though, only very rarely does the person behind the argument loom large. Twenty years ago I […]
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