Kevin Edgecomb over at biblicalia has made the move from Blogger to WordPress, a move that I just made earlier this week. So you will have to update your feed to his site if you use a RSS reader.
I am quite happy with WordPress so far. I’m still playing around with settings and adjusting the look of my blog (how do you like the new “Codex” header?), as well as checking out some useful plugins.
I highly recommend checking out WordPress if you are not satisfied with your current blogging program.
The New York Times published an interesting article the other day by Jonathan D. Glater entitled, “To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” (To read the full article you will have to sign-up for a free account). The article explores the implications of technology such as email on the student-professor relationship. Here are some relevent excerpts:
At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate.
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While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor’s time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.
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But such e-mail messages can have consequences, she added. “Students don’t understand that what they say in e-mail can make them seem very unprofessional, and could result in a bad recommendation.”Still, every professor interviewed emphasized that instant feedback could be invaluable. A question about a lecture or discussion “is for me an indication of a blind spot, that the student didn’t get it,” said Austin D. Sarat, a professor of political science at Amherst College.
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A few professors said they had rules for e-mail and told their students how quickly they would respond, how messages should be drafted and what types of messages they would answer.Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor’s response to an e-mail message.
“One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back,” Professor Worley said.
This raises a bunch of interesting questions for instructors. As a professor who encourages students to email me and one who is pretty informal, I don’t see it as a huge issue. I find email a great way to communicate with my students. I try to respond to most emails in a timely manner and I don’t necessarily reply to every email, especially if they are not directly tied to the course (as a rule I do not like email responses that require too involved a response; I will typically ask the student to catch me after the next class if possible).
I do like the idea of setting up some guidelines for emails at the onset, as I have received some emails that were too informal and bordering on inappropriate. I am not sure I would expect students to send a thank you reply. I do have “netiquette” rules that I use for class discussion lists and boards that I could adapt.
What do you — whether instructor or student — think? The comment board is open.
Michael V. Fox has a thought provoking essay at the most recent SBL Forum entitled, “Bible Scholarship and Faith-Based Study: My View.” While I have the utmost respect for Fox as a scholar (his various works on the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible are absolutely second to none), I am not sure I agree with his bold statement “faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship” (see Danny Zacharias’s reflections at Deinde, as well as James Crossley’s posts here and here).
On the one hand, I’m not sure I like the implication that “faith-based scholarship” (or Wissenschaft) is an oxymoron. While I would agree that any scholarship that presumes its conclusions is methodologically problematic (and borders on disingenuous), faith-based scholarship does not necessarily have to fall in this category (though some certainly does). Furthermore, I would think that secular Wissenschaft could learn a lot from a lot of faith-based scholarship as well as other ideological approaches. As Peter Donovan has recently noted, “the scientific study of religion can ill afford to insulate itself from the thinking of others interested in the same subject-matter, merely because they may hold very different views about theory and method” (“Neutrality in Religious Studies,” in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader [ed. Russell T. McCutcheon; New York: Cassell, 1999], 245). What is perhaps most important for any approach to biblical studies is that the approach is academically sound, methodologically rigorous, and up front about any and all presuppositions.
On the other hand, Fox’s point has some validity in that he is not dismissing the “scholarship of persons who hold a personal faith.” In fact, he notes that “there are many religious individuals whose scholarship is secular and who introduce their faith only in distinctly religious forums.” Basically what I understand Fox as saying is that “Wissenschaft” employs a “secular, academic, religiously-neutral hermeneutic” and any scholars who want to engage in biblical Wissenschaft needs to play by the agreed upon rules. Thus, Wissenschaft becomes a “middle discourse” by which people of different faiths and/or no faith can engage in scholarly discourse.
This debate within biblical studies is paralleled by a larger debate within the discipline of religious studies. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the discipline of religious studies has typically been understood to be the “value-neutral” and “objective” study of religions, while theology is the confessional or particularistic study of one religion (see, for example, Donald Wiebe, “The Politics of Religious Studies,” CSSR Bulletin 27/4 [November 1998] 95-98). This distinction played an important part in the establishment of religious studies departments in a number of universities in Europe and North America — and especially Canadian public universities (interestingly, not all educational institutions thought that the distinction was necessary). This traditional demarcation has been challenged on some fronts in light of the postmodern recognition that there is no real objective, value-neutral study of religion (or any other subject for that matter), and thus the only differences between the disciplines are the rules agreed upon by those working within them — the rules of the game, so to speak.
(For an interesting discussion of postmodern theories of religious studies, see the interaction between Garrett Green, “Challenging the Religious Studies Canon: Karl Barth’s Theory of Religion,” Journal of Religion 75 [1995] 473-86; Russell T. McCutcheon, “My Theory of the Brontosaurus: Postmodernism and ‘Theory’ of Religion,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 26/1 [1997] 3-23, and William E. Arnal, “What if I Don’t Want to Play Tennis?: A Rejoinder to Russell McCutcheon on Postmodernism and Theory of Religion,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 27/1 [1998] 61-68; see also McCutcheon’s response, “Returning the Volley to William E. Arnal” on pp. 67-68 of the same issue).
In practice, religious studies (and biblical studies) in the Canadian public university context tends to be the scientific study of religion which does not privilege one religious discourse above another. Theology, on the other hand, is typically defined as the study of one religion from a confessional standpoint. So in this sense, I agree with Fox that there is a valid difference between faith-based scholarship and secular scholarship. But the question remains “what rules are we going to play by?” While I appreciate Fox’s point, I am skeptical about whether there is any scholarship that is truly “objective” and “value-neutral.” And any scholar who suggests that their work is “objective” and “value-neutral” would perhaps be more at home in the 19th century! I for one live in both worlds and produce scholarship for a variety of contexts. Some of my research is for the broader academy and employs methods appropriate for such work, while some of my study is for the community of faith to which I belong and employs a slightly different approach. I hope, however, that all of my research may stand up under the scrutiny of scholars who take different approaches and have different presuppositions than I.
Let me end with the final exchange between David and his Rebbe from Chaim Potok’s masterful book In the Beginning (Ballantine, 1997; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com).
Matt Page at Bible Films Blog has an excellent discussion of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988; IMDb; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com). While I appreciate this film, I have to admit that everytime I have watched it I find it quite slow moving. I also have a hard time with Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel playing Jesus and Judas — I have seen too many of their other films to appreciate their performances (especially Keitel).
While I am at it, I should highlight Matt’s Bible Films Blog. Matt and I share an interest in Bible films (and rugby), and this common interest led to some correspondence last year when I was working on my “Old Testament on Film” pages. Matt’s blog is in my blogroll under “Faith & Film” and I encourage you to check it out regularly.
I can’t believe it! Say it isn’t so! The Canadian Men’s Hockey Team just LOST to Russia 2-0 and are eliminated from the Olympic playoffs. While the team wasn’t playing so hot the last couple games, no one really thought that they would be eliminated today by the Russians! Sad, very sad, indeed. I still can’t believe it.
It is an interesting commentary on the state of international hockey when the two teams packed with NHL professionals (Canada and the US Team, which also lost today) both lose in the quarter-finals. Pride before a fall or what?