ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Bombarded by otherness, the subjectivity springing out of the three sacred texts of the Abrahamic tradition faces influence, invasion, and inspiration from innumerable sources in the Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an. Divinity, demons, destiny, and the desert all have their way with their human targets. The inscribed combat and collaboration between these biblical humans and their biblical others continues to resonate with believers and doubters alike. The use of a variety of theoretical and imaginative strategies helps to foreground the action at this dynamic interface. Polymorphous strategies are welcome, including rhetorical criticism, literary theories, cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, mysticism, sociology, psychology, and performance studies.

Friday, March 24

Mehnaz Afridi, University of South Africa
“Islam and Its Forgotten Others”
Margot Colbert, University of Nevada Las Vegas
“Choreographing the Golem and the Dybbuk: Portrait of the Other, Jewish Folklore in Dance”
Dayton Haskin, Boston College
“An Erasure of Jewishness: The Case of ‘The Jew of Malta’”
William McBride, Illinois State University
“Homo fictilis: Thrown Clay—Fallible, Malleable, Asleep”

Saturday, March 25

Othman Shibly, University at Buffalo
“Otherness in the Quran”
Jennifer Koosed, Albright College, and Robert Seesengood, Drew University
“Crossing Outlaws: The Legendary Lives and Deaths of Jesse James and Jesus of Nazareth”
J’annine Jobling, Liverpool Hope University, and Alan Roughley, Liverpool Hope University
“Betting on Disaster: Readings of Job”

Sunday, March 26

Catherine Winiarski, University of California, Irvine
“Reformation Iconoclasm: Christianity between Hebrew and Greek”
Toni Tidswell, University of New England, Australia
“The literary type of the desiring “other”: the Queen of Sheba in the Tanakh and the Qur’an.”
Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“The Rock between the Trees: Pantheist and Panentheist subtext in the Tanakh”