Current Conference

Orality and Literacy VII :
Oral-scribal Dimensions of Scripture, Piety and Practice in
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

All sessions are open to the Rice academic community, to the Houston community and to interested colleagues nationwide and internationally.   Due to space limitations, registration is required for all Sessions beginning Sunday, April 13, 2008.  Registration deadline is April 1, 2008.  Register now at: https://cohesion.rice.edu/
Services/EventReg/?event=VT08

The Rice University conference will be the seventh in a series of Orality-Literacy conferences that was inaugurated in 2001 in South Africa and over the years convened on three continents: Africa, Europe and North America. In the previous six conferences the focus was on the following topics: colonialism, the world of the spirits, memory, diversity, ritual and tradition – always from the perspective of oral-scribal dynamics. 

The 2008 Rice University conference will be devoted to an examination of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with particular sensitivity extended to the aesthetic, compositional, and performative aspects of the three faiths in their historically appropriate media contexts.  Beginning with the pre-modern period and reaching into our postmodern world, the philological, textual paradigm has served as the intellectual matrix for classical and biblical scholarship, for medieval studies and for the study of world religions. The intellectual accomplishments of this paradigm are incontestable, monumental even.

The Rice University conference is designed to provide the philological, textual study of the monotheistic faiths fresh insights and significant challenges. If the flourishing discipline of orality-literacy studies has shown anything conclusive it is that prior to the invention of print the verbal arts were an intricate interplay of orality and scribality, with manuscripts often serving as mere reference points for recitation and memorization. This is especially true in the case of these three world religions.

The conference will contribute to bringing scholars in Judaism and Christianity together with Islamicists in working toward a paradigm that calls for a new set of sensibilities and a critical reflection upon the role of the media technologies in the formation and transmission of these religions.

The conference will break with the conventional conference pattern of back-to-back lectures.  Instead, we have devised conference procedures that will maximize interdisciplinary discussions.  To further broaden the intellectual scope of the conference we have invited two prominent Africanists to serve as respondents to the conference sessions.

The conference will be videotaped by Eugene and Anna Botha, UNISA, Pretoria, South Africa.

The principal sponsor of the conference is the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University. Co-sponsors are Rice University’s Humanities Research Center, the Office of the Dean of Humanities, the Department of History, the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology (formerly CITI), and the Department of Religious Studies.

Conference Organizers:

Werner Kelber, Isla Carroll & Percy E. Turner Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Rice University (kelber@rice.edu)

Paula Sanders, Associate Professor of History (Islamicist) and Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, Rice University (sanders@rice.edu)

Keynote Address:  John Miles Foley, W. H. Byler Endowed Chair in the Humanities and Curator’s Professor of Classical Studies and English, Director of the Center for eResearch and Director of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri-Columbia

Judaism:

David Carr, Union Theological Seminary, New York
Talya Fishman, University of Pennsylvania
Catherine Hezser, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London
David Nelson, Texas Christian University & Brite Divinity School

Christianity:

Holly Hearon, Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis
Richard Horsley, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Werner Kelber, Rice University
David Rhoads, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Islam:

Angelika Neuwirth, Freie Universität, Berlin
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Indiana University
Gregor Schoeler, University of Basel
Priscilla Soucek, New York University

Respondents:

Ruth Finnegan, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Jeff Opland, University of South Africa & University of London

Final Conference Respondent:
William A. Graham, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies (Islamicist) and Professor of the History of Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, and author of Beyond the Written Word: oral aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion.