6. Austin 2016

The Sixth Enoch Graduate Seminar, chaired by Jonathan Kaplan and Kelley Coblentz Bautch, will be hosted by the University of Texas at Austin from the evening of May 22 to the evening of May 25, 2016. The University of Texas at Austin is the flagship university of the University of Texas system. With over 50,000 students, the university hosts graduate programs in Ancient Mediterranean Religions in the Religious Studies department and Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East in the Middle Eastern Studies department. Faculty and students in these programs are part a burgeoning cohort of scholars in the region working in Second Temple Judaism and Christian and Rabbinic origins.

Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers working in all fields of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins are invited to participate and present papers. Papers proposals in English (500-1000 words) from all fields of early Judaism (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Christian origins, Rabbinic origins, Jewish-Hellenistic literature, etc.) should be submitted by email to the seminar secretary, Isaac W. Oliver (ioliver@bradley.edu), by December 15, 2015. Completed papers of 6000 words should be submitted by the end of March 2016, to be distributed in advance among the invited Seminar participants.

The Sixth Enoch Graduate Seminar will include for the first time a session with papers by Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers dealing with the Quran and the history of early Islam read in conversation with Jewish and Christian traditions of the Second Temple period and Late Antiquity. Using the tools of historical criticism and the new methods put forth in the study of Second Temple Judaism and Christian and Rabbinic origins, the papers will contribute to the renewed study of formative Islam as part and parcel of the complex process of religious identity formation in Late Antiquity.

Invited speakers, including Gabriele Boccaccini, Matthias Henze, Na’ama Pat-El, and L. Michael White will deliver plenary lectures on topics of special interest. Revised versions of the best papers will be collected and published in a peer-reviewed volume. Room and board will be completely covered for seminar participants. Further funding is currently being sought to cover partial travel expenses for seminar participants. For further information and application, please contact Dr. Oliver (ioliver@bradley.edu).