News from the Religious Studies Chair January 2016

In January we played host to a number of candidates for our tenure-track position in Biblical Studies. I hope to be able to share further good news about that search in the near future. Our most distinguished guest this past month was our annual Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor. This year, in honour of the 50th anniversary of our graduate programs, we invited back an outstanding alumna of our Phd program, and former faculty member, Dr. Adele Reinhartz from the University of Ottawa. Professor Reinhartz is one of the most prominent scholars of Biblical Studies working in Canada today. Her main areas of research are New Testament (Johannine scholarship), early Jewish-Christian relations, the Bible and Film, and feminist biblical criticism. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (Continuum, 2001), Scripture on the Silver Screen (Westminster John Knox, 2003), Jesus of Hollywood (Oxford, 2007), Caiaphas the High Priest (University of South Carolina Press, 2011; Fortress 2012) and Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (Routledge, 2013). Adele Reinhartz is the General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature.  She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2005.

While she was on campus she met with students and faculty members, gave a departmental seminar on "Story and History: John, Judaism and the Historical Imagination" and a public lecture in Convocation Hall on "Jesus: Bad Jew or Good Jew?" We thoroughly enjoyed having Adele back among us, if only for a short while.

Publications

Stephen Westerholm and Martin Westerholm (MA McMaster, PhD Aberdeen) Reading Sacred Scripture: Voices from the History of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

Invited Talks and Conference Participation

Dana Hollander was the invited keynote speaker at the Midwestern Inter-University Workshop in Jewish Studies (organized by graduate students from University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Indiana University), which took place on the campus of Northwestern University.  The workshop topic was “Messianism”; and she presented on "Isolation and Universalism: Hermann Cohen’s Messianic Politics."

Travis Kroeker and Graham Baker (PhD candidate, Western) both participated in a panel on "George Grant's Contribution to Technology Ethics," at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in Toronto.

Graduate Student Research

Vinay Khetia (PhD candidate, Western) joined the Shiah Institute as a research associate. It is an academic think tank based in London which is made up of senior and junior scholars working on the  academic study of Shia Islam.

Alumnae News

Several former students and faculty from the Department are contributors to a new book from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. The book is called "Canadian Women Shaping Disaporic Religious Identities", edited by Becky Lee and former McMaster Religious Studies graduate student Terry Tak-ling Woo, with contributions by Nanette Spina (PhD McMaster), and former faculty member Anne Pearson (PhD McMaster), with research assistance from an alumna of our undergraduate program, Preeti Nayak.

And Finally...

Thanks for reading January's News from the Chair.  Please let me know of any errors or omissions.  Please remember that you can always find the department on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.