History Commons^™

A Response To Hector Avalos, The End Of Biblical Studies, Alan Lenzi

Alan Lenzi

No abstract provided.

Assyriology At The Liberal Arts College: A Report From The Field, Alan Lenzi

Alan Lenzi

There is an ideal in American Assyriology that active scholars will work at a research university, where they will teach Akkadian and/or Sumerian and lead philological seminars on selected texts from their sub-specialty. Although such an Assyriologist may teach an undergraduate course or two each year, their most important pedagogical efforts will be directed at graduate students. The reality of the academic job market makes this career path available to relatively few scholars. Those who remain in academia often find employment teaching undergraduates in a department of history, religious studies, art history, or comparative literature. The present paper shares my …

A Six-Column Babylonian Tablet Of Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi And The Reconstruction Of Tablet Iv, Alan Lenzi, Amar Annus

Alan Lenzi

The article presents a discussion of the reconstruction of Tablet IV of the six-column Babylonian tablet of Ludlul B̄el N̄emeqi, owned by the British Museum and being rebuilt in 2011. Comments are given describing the provenance of the artifacts as well as their significance in containing a complete text of an ancient Babylonian wisdom poem. Several diagrams are presented mapping the fragments along with transcriptions of the inscriptions found on the tablet. Extensive footnotes are included outlining the grammar and translation of the texts.

Peter Dubovsky, Hezekiah And The Assyrian Spies: Reconstruction Of The Neo-Assyrian Intelligence Services And Its Significance For 2 Kings 18–19, Alan Lenzi

Alan Lenzi

A review of the book "Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies: Reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian Intelligence Services and Its Significance for 2 Kings 18-19," which is part of the Biblica et Orientalia series 49, by Peter Dubovský is presented.

Mark Smith, God In Translation: Deities In Cross-Cultural Discourse In The Biblical World, Alan Lenzi

Alan Lenzi

The article reviews the book "God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World," by Mark S. Smith.

Ambassadors For The Kingdom Of God Or For America? Christian Nationalism, The Christian Right, And The Contra War, Lauren Frances Turek

Lauren Turek

This essay uses the concept of Christian nationalism to explore the religious dynamics of the Contra war and U.S.–Nicaraguan relations during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Religious organizations and individuals played crucial roles on both sides in the war in Nicaragua and in the debates in the United States over support for the Contras. Evangelistic work strengthened transnational ties between Christians, but also raised the stakes of the war; supporters of the Sandinistas and Contras alike alleged a victory by their adversary imperiled the future of Christianity in Nicaragua. Christian nationalism thus manifested itself and intertwined in both the United States and …

Can Business History And Business Anthropology Learn From Each Other?, R. Daniel Wadhwani, Per H. Hansen

R. Daniel Wadhwani

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Special Collections And Museum Exhibits: A Civil War Or The War Of Northern Aggression?, Christopher J. Anderson

Christopher Anderson

This essay examines the political nature of curating special collections and museum exhibits. Exhibits are designed to draw attention to historical or contemporary issues in order for viewers to reflect on the past and to ask questions in the present. The contents of an exhibit also echo the educational backgrounds, interests, and biases of both curator and curatorial team. As a result exhibits are framed ideologically, sociologically, and even theologically in order to give voice to the voiceless and to champion certain positions from history. This essay investigates the contested nature of exhibits by highlighting their basic and complicated spectrums …

The Sacred Times Prescribed In The Pentateuch : Old Testament Indicators Of The Extent Of Their Applicability, H. Ross Cole

Ross Cole

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the sacred times prescribed in the Pentateuch and to determine if the Old Testament itself contains indicators of the extent of their applicability. "Applicability" refers primarily to ongoing applicability throughout time. However, whether a sacred time will be universally applicable in the future may be directly related to whether it was ever meant to be universally applicable in the first place. Accordingly, this study entails a close examination of many different features of the Pentateuchal sacred times and their applicability. Chapter 1 reviews relevant literature and describes the present investigator's methodology. On …

Napalm: More Than A Weapon, Edwin Martini

Edwin A. Martini

This book will explore the military, political, and cultural history of napalm across time and space. Moving beyond the Vietnam War, this book will examine the use of napalm by the United States in World War Two, Korea, and elsewhere, and its proliferation in other countries’ arsenals as well. It will also explore the many cultural representations of napalm in the post-Vietnam war world.

The British Proclamation Of 1763, Thomas Gage, And French Property Rights At Detroit, Guillaume Teasdale

Guillaume Teasdale

Charting The Past And Future Of Mormon Women's History, Keith A. Erekson

Keith A Erekson

No abstract provided.

"Excuse Us, While We Fix The Sky: Weird Supermen And Climate Engineering", James R. Fleming

James R. Fleming

No abstract provided.

Science Serving Industry: Documentary Authority And Industrial Influence In 19th Century American Chemistry, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

No abstract provided.

Proposing Projects In Digital History, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

Digital Libraries, Digital History, And The Use Of Omeka, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

Great Lakes Navigation And Navigational Aids: Historical Context Study, Theodore J. Karamanski

Theodore J. Karamanski

No abstract provided.

Drawing The People’S Map, Margo Shea

Margo Shea

Excuse Us, While We Fix The Sky: Weird Supermen And Climate Engineering, James R. Fleming

James R. Fleming

No abstract provided.

The Digital Humanities As Cultural Capital: Implications For Biblical And Religious Studies, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

Although the study of the Bible was central to early Humanities Computing efforts, now Biblical Studies and Religious Studies are marginal disciplines in the emerging field known as Digital Humanities (English, History, Library Science, for example, are much more influential in DH.) This paper explores two questions: First, what does it mean for Biblical Studies to be marginal to the Digital Humanities when DH is increasingly seen as the locus of as transformation in the humanities? Second, how can our expertise in Biblical Studies influence and shape Digital Humanities for the better? Digital Humanities, I argue, constitutes a powerful emerging …

Review Of Nicola Denzey, The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds Of Early Christian Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

No abstract provided.

Review Of Ewa Wipszycka, Moines Et Communautés Monastiques En Égypte (Ive-Viie Siècles), Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

No abstract provided.

Review Of Andrew T. Crislip, From Monastery To Hospital: Christian Monasticism And The Transformation Of Healthcare In Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University Of Michigan Press, 2005), Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

No abstract provided.

Review Of Arietta Papaconstantinou And Alice-Mary Talbot, Ed., Becoming Byzantine: Children And Childhood In Byzantium, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

No abstract provided.

Raiders Of The Lost Corpus, Caroline T. Schroeder, Amir Zeldes

Caroline Schroeder

Coptic represents the last phase of the Egyptian language and is pivotal for a wide range of disciplines, such as linguistics, biblical studies, the history of Christianity, Egyptology, and ancient history. It was also essential for "cracking the code" of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although digital humanities has been hailed as distinctly interdisciplinary, enabling new forms of knowledge by combining multiple forms of disciplinary investigation, technical obtacles exist for creating a resource useful to both linguists and historians, for example. The nature of the language (outside of the Indo-European family) also requires its own approach. This paper will present some of …

Prophecy And Porneia In Shenoute's Letters: The Rhetoric Of Sexuality In A Late Antique Egyptian Monastery, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

The writer examines the apparently ubiquitous sexual references in the first surviving letters of Shenoute. Shenoute's references to sexuality constitute one aspect of his self-representation as his community's prophet. His textual performance as a prophet in these texts indicates that his sexual rhetoric served not only to condemn sexual activity among ascetics but also to help construct a relationship between God and the monastic community that is based on the relationship between God and the people in the Christian Old Testament. The sins of the monastery, as understood by Shenoute, like those of Israel or the nations in the prophetic …

Computational Methods For Coptic: Developing And Using Part-Of-Speech Tagging For Digital Scholarship In The Humanities, Caroline T. Schroeder, Amir Zeldes

Caroline Schroeder

This article motivates and details the first implementation of a freely available part of speech tag set and tagger for Coptic. Coptic is the last phase of the Egyptian language family and a descendant of the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Unlike classical Greek and Latin, few resources for digital and computational work have existed for ancient Egyptian language and literature until now. We evaluate our tag set in an inter-annotator agreement experiment and examine some of the difficulties in tagging Coptic data. Using an existing digital lexicon and a small training corpus taken from several genres of literary Sahidic Coptic …

Conference Report On Cosmopolitan Alexandria: A Symposium, Cornell University, October 20-21, 2002, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

No abstract provided.

Child Sacrifice In Egyptian Monastic Culture: From Familial Renunciation To Jephthah's Lost Daughter, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

The Apophthegmata Patrum tells the story of a man who, wishing to join a monastery, reenacts Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac by proceeding to throw his son in the Nile River on the command of the monastic father. Like Isaac, the boy is spared. This account of extreme familial renunciation in the service of the ascetic life is not the only account of a child killing or attempted killing in monastic literature. Nor does the biblical prefigurement of ascetic renunciation exhaust these narratives' significance. This essay examines accounts of child killings in Egyptian monastic culture through the lens of various textual …

Ancient Egyptian Religion On The Silver Screen: Modern Anxieties About Race, Ethnicity, And Religion, Caroline T. Schroeder

Caroline Schroeder

This essay examines the depiction of religion, race, and ethnicity in four films: The Mummy, Stargate, The Ten Commandments, and Prince of Egypt. Each film - explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or not - uses ancient Egyptian religion as a foil to dramatize American concerns about race and ethnicity. The foil is the mysterious, and often false, religiosity of an often Orientalized religious and ethnic "other."