Canonizing Scripture: Historical Simulation
We are just wrapping up my undergraduate course at Brown University entitled “How the Bible Became Holy.” I have earlier posted a syllabus for this course, which can be found here. This was the third...
View ArticlePope Francis on the Sadducees
I recently published a short piece on the Sadducees in Bible Odyssey. It was fun to do, if for no other reason than it gave me an opportunity to stake out my (controversial) position on the origin of...
View ArticleHow to Get Into Brown University…
…in 1793. For a research project (to be revealed in time) I have been looking at The Laws of Rhode-Island College (later renamed Brown University). It begins: No person shall be admitted into this...
View ArticleHow to Evaluate University Teaching
How should we evaluate teaching in institutions of higher education? Despite the deep relevance of this question today, the truth is that we are only beginning to have that discussion and in many...
View ArticleToward a New Model of Academic Publishing
A couple of months ago I published a letter in the New York Times sketching a different way forward for academic publishing. I have now published a more robust version of that argument in The...
View ArticleThe Naming of Brown University
Brown University began its life as the College of Rhode Island. In 1804, Nicholas Brown gave the college $5000 in order to endow two professorships, and in gratitude the Corporation renamed the...
View ArticleBAM: The Big Ancient Mediterranean
I’m delighted to be taking part in a conference on the “Big Ancient Mediterranean” at the University of Iowa next week. The goal of the conference is to help various digital projects dealing with the...
View ArticleThe Big Ancient Mediterranean: A Preliminary Thought
I had the good fortune of participating today in a conference called The Big Ancient Mediterranean at the University of Iowa. The purpose of the conference is to discuss ways in which digital projects...
View ArticleThe Big Ancient Mediterranean: Middle Thoughts
As The Big Ancient Mediterranean Conference begins to wind down, my head is swirling. People are working on amazing things and it is hard not to keep thinking of all the different ways to learn from...
View ArticleCreate, Process, Link: Some Final Thoughts on The Big Ancient Mediterranean...
Now back home it will take me a while to process what I’ve learned at The Big Ancient Mediterranean Conference, and even longer to work through my new, vastly expanded, to-do list. Here I want only to...
View ArticleJustice for All
I had a letter published in the New York Times yesterday. I actually wrote it a couple of weeks ago. I continue to be upset by the enormous impact that money has on our legal system; it seems so very...
View ArticleUsing Video in Religious Studies Classes
A few years back I tried to incorporate video clips into my teaching. Below is a link to a brief account I recently published in AJS Perspectives on this experiment. What are ways that you find most...
View ArticleJews and Money: A New Course
Last year I co-taught a class called “Wealth: Religious Approaches” and ran a related workshop, “Jewish Approaches to Wealth and Poverty.” I am now preparing the sources presented at the workshop for...
View ArticleJewish Charity in Antiquity
The online forum Ancient Jew Review recently published three essays on Jewish charity in antiquity, by Alyssa Gray, Gregg Gardner, and Yael Wilfand. I highly recommend these essays which together...
View ArticleDigital Preservation
Over the past few years, institutional digital repositories and more broad-based digital “commons” have proliferated. Many are found at universities (Brown now has one) and sites such as Zenodo and...
View ArticleAmerica First
America leads through its values. A hackneyed phrase if there ever was one and one that I never took seriously until this week. The true meaning of this phrase – and particularly of the key ambiguous...
View ArticlePaying for College in 1803
When I pay our son’s college tuition I am given a variety of options, from full payment up-front to installment plans, but no matter how I pay I must use U.S. currency. Which raises the question,...
View ArticleEvaluating University Teaching
At most colleges and universities, the granting of tenure and promotion is based on achievement in three key areas: scholarship, teaching, and service. Measuring scholarship and service is not exactly...
View ArticleTelling the Story of the Holocaust in Germany. Or Not.
It must be a daunting task to memorialize the Holocaust. The fact is, there is no real way to do this right. No matter how good your representation, in whatever medium, you know that you will face...
View ArticleTagging the Talmud
This essay is cross-posted at thetalmud.com where it kicks off a series on digital humanities. The other week I attended a workshop called Classical Philology Goes Digital Workshop in Potsdam, Germany....
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