This paper explores the mummies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily as material objects ... more This paper explores the mummies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily as material objects that become agents of cultural meaning on regional and universal levels through processes of human praxis. Informed by three theoretical notions: materiality, spatiality and Daniel Miller's understanding of consumption, the analysis focuses on two ongoing events: the commoditization of the Catacombs as a tourist site and the scientific investigation of the mummies and their environment by teams of experts from the Sicily Mummy Project. These events are identified as processes of consumption, that is, praxes through which engagement with a material object confers it with the agency to generate cultural meaning. In general, the scientific investigation of the mummies as repositories of medical data has enabled their universal cultural agency as 'biological archives'. By contrast, arguably, the unique historical materiality of child mummy, Rosalia Lombardo, has enabled her agency as a metonym for contemporary, regional Sicilian identity.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2015
Four consecutive mishnayot, Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to en... more Four consecutive mishnayot, Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to end marriage and betrothal are examined through the lens of two overlapping theoretical frames, anthropology of the senses and legal aesthetics, in the process expanding traditional scholarly methodologies used to examine early rabbinic halakhah and the culture in which it emerged through the use of interdisciplinary theory. Using these theoretical frames, as yet unexploited as far as rabbinic halakhah is concerned, this study highlights the intersection of sensory experience and gender in rabbinic ideologies of marriage, through analysis of the language, rhetoric and formal structure of early rabbinic halakhic texts.
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, Nov 1, 2012
This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cul... more This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cultural anthropology, is an enterprise of feminist historiography. Focusing on ARNB's singular formulation of aggadic accounts of Eve's sin, it proposes a possible historical trajectory of Jewish women's experience and how that experience was perceived, manipulated and/or negotiated by the Jewish men who were the formulators and transmitters of rabbinic tradition. Generally speaking, traditions about women and gender in ARN demonstrate a stance on the natural, religious and social subordination of women to men, which I will designate “patriarchal stewardship.” Yet the Eve traditions, especially those in ARNB, go beyond articulating this androcentric stance on gender differentiation and social hierarchy; they negotiate a cognitive, religious problem: why do women, and women alone, suffer and die in the process of biological reproduction if “be fruitful and multiply” is a divine imperative in Genesis 1:28?
Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies
A lthough Professor Frederik Wisse was never my thesis supervisor, jtVhis graduate teaching has r... more A lthough Professor Frederik Wisse was never my thesis supervisor, jtVhis graduate teaching has remained influential in my teaching and scholarship, and I am most pleased to offer this essay as tribute to my much respected and well appreciated former teacher and colleague. Regrettably I do not read Coptic, nor does it appear that I ever shall, being fully occupied with the prosaic but all consuming advising, program planning, undergraduate and graduate teaching, committee work, public appearances, that constitute my current job as Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion in a large, urban, public university located on the fringes of the American South, yet very much in the heart of the Bible Belt. But strangely enough, Coptic has colored my teaching here in a way it never did while teaching in Canada, not the Coptic language itself precisely, but the largely Coptic corpus of the Nag Hammadi library (Robinson 1978). While studying these texts for the first time in Professor Wisse's graduate seminar on Gnosticism in fall 1983, I could not foresee how useful they would be, 20 years later, trying to instill a critical approach to the study of religious belief and practice here in Bible Belt, almost Southern, USA. In fact, if the success of one's academic training can be judged by how much a graduate student can directly transfer content from a course to his subsequent teaching, Fred Wisse's Gnosticism course comes out, without contest, on top, providing me with more raw teaching material than any other course taken during my graduate career. Although I teach in a public American university, hence ostensibly effecting the constitutional mandate of separation of Church and State, the student culture fully embodies the dominant culture of the region. This culture is a recently urbanized culture, a pious culture, and a thoroughly Christian culture. It is also a patriotic culture, right wing politically, in which being a good Christian and a good American
Synthesizing Durkheim’s notion of “sacred symbol” with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of “authent... more Synthesizing Durkheim’s notion of “sacred symbol” with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of “authenticity,” this paper proposes the theoretical construct, “authentic symbol,” to account for the symbolic function of Holocaust relics in contemporary Holocaust pilgrimage. The symbolic function of four kinds of relics (the sites, witness/survivors, human bodily remains and accessories) is examined and compared in three different contexts: The March of the Living Holocaust tours organized for Diaspora Jewish teenagers, the Masa tours organized for Israeli and practical aims of the tours and displays teenagers and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Different ritual experiences are found to predominate in each of the three contexts, which significantly correlate with how symbols are processed by participants and the different ideological.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2018
Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylo... more Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V.9. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2015
Four consecutive mishnayot , Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to e... more Four consecutive mishnayot , Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to end marriage and betrothal are examined through the lens of two overlapping theoretical frames, anthropology of the senses and legal aesthetics, in the process expanding traditional scholarly methodologies used to examine early rabbinic halakhah and the culture in which it emerged through the use of interdisciplinary theory. Using these theoretical frames, as yet unexploited as far as rabbinic halakhah is concerned, this study highlights the intersection of sensory experience and gender in rabbinic ideologies of marriage, through analysis of the language, rhetoric and formal structure of early rabbinic halakhic texts.
Élaboration de métriques basées sur la géométrie pour la planification de traitements en radiothé... more Élaboration de métriques basées sur la géométrie pour la planification de traitements en radiothérapie par modulation d'intensité à l'aide de l'analyse de frontières stochastiques Mémoire Marie-Chantal Gagné Maîtrise en physique-physique médicale Maître ès sciences (M.Sc.
This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cul... more This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cultural anthropology, is an enterprise of feminist historiography. Focusing on ARNB's singular formulation of aggadic accounts of Eve's sin, it proposes a possible historical trajectory of Jewish women's experience and how that experience was perceived, manipulated and/or negotiated by the Jewish men who were the formulators and transmitters of rabbinic tradition. Generally speaking, traditions about women and gender in ARN demonstrate a stance on the natural, religious and social subordination of women to men, which I will designate “patriarchal stewardship.” Yet the Eve traditions, especially those in ARNB, go beyond articulating this androcentric stance on gender differentiation and social hierarchy; they negotiate a cognitive, religious problem: why do women, and women alone, suffer and die in the process of biological reproduction if “be fruitful and multiply” is a divine ...
Based upon fieldwork conducted in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, this paper explores ... more Based upon fieldwork conducted in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, this paper explores the way in which the disposition, display and commemoration of the dead create meaning for communities of the living. Using two theoretical frames, "the work of the dead," of Thomas Laqueur, and the Weberian cultural-historical notions of "disenchantment" and "reenchantment," the analysis centers on the recent reburial of one of the star mummies of the Catacombs, that of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombardi. Rosalia Lombardi's reburial, as well as recent forensic medical research undertaken in the Catacombs by teams of scientific experts, shows how the ideological influence and relevance of human dead to communities of the living are, in this instance, transformed from local, to transnational ideological and cultural arenas.
My diss ertation constitutes an experiment in methodology for the literary analysis of entire Rab... more My diss ertation constitutes an experiment in methodology for the literary analysis of entire Rabbinic compilations. I employ a method through which a literary analysis of individual units of a greater text enable us to explore the redactional problems of the text as a whole. The focus of my research is Avot de Rabbi Natan (ARN) , a Rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah Tractate Avot, \"i11ich hi:\',; berm pl'- e~;er-ved in t\fm elate(~t'~_el~sion s U:'lr~NA and AF\I\lE!). Pil. thout;)h the cm-e of Af:':N is Tarmaitic ~2(l(l-~) AD), both versions have undergone lengthy and separate transmission processes so that the texts in their present form cannot be considered so t~arl·l· My thesis research explores two different but related problems. The first problem directly concerns ARNA and AF\NB: the peculiar characteri s tics of each version that might shed light on their relationship and their different process of development. The second problem is much broader: the...
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2018
Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylo... more Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V.9. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
This paper explores the mummies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily as material objects ... more This paper explores the mummies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily as material objects that become agents of cultural meaning on regional and universal levels through processes of human praxis. Informed by three theoretical notions: materiality, spatiality and Daniel Miller's understanding of consumption, the analysis focuses on two ongoing events: the commoditization of the Catacombs as a tourist site and the scientific investigation of the mummies and their environment by teams of experts from the Sicily Mummy Project. These events are identified as processes of consumption, that is, praxes through which engagement with a material object confers it with the agency to generate cultural meaning. In general, the scientific investigation of the mummies as repositories of medical data has enabled their universal cultural agency as 'biological archives'. By contrast, arguably, the unique historical materiality of child mummy, Rosalia Lombardo, has enabled her agency as a metonym for contemporary, regional Sicilian identity.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2015
Four consecutive mishnayot, Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to en... more Four consecutive mishnayot, Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to end marriage and betrothal are examined through the lens of two overlapping theoretical frames, anthropology of the senses and legal aesthetics, in the process expanding traditional scholarly methodologies used to examine early rabbinic halakhah and the culture in which it emerged through the use of interdisciplinary theory. Using these theoretical frames, as yet unexploited as far as rabbinic halakhah is concerned, this study highlights the intersection of sensory experience and gender in rabbinic ideologies of marriage, through analysis of the language, rhetoric and formal structure of early rabbinic halakhic texts.
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, Nov 1, 2012
This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cul... more This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cultural anthropology, is an enterprise of feminist historiography. Focusing on ARNB's singular formulation of aggadic accounts of Eve's sin, it proposes a possible historical trajectory of Jewish women's experience and how that experience was perceived, manipulated and/or negotiated by the Jewish men who were the formulators and transmitters of rabbinic tradition. Generally speaking, traditions about women and gender in ARN demonstrate a stance on the natural, religious and social subordination of women to men, which I will designate “patriarchal stewardship.” Yet the Eve traditions, especially those in ARNB, go beyond articulating this androcentric stance on gender differentiation and social hierarchy; they negotiate a cognitive, religious problem: why do women, and women alone, suffer and die in the process of biological reproduction if “be fruitful and multiply” is a divine imperative in Genesis 1:28?
Arc: The Journal of the School of Religious Studies
A lthough Professor Frederik Wisse was never my thesis supervisor, jtVhis graduate teaching has r... more A lthough Professor Frederik Wisse was never my thesis supervisor, jtVhis graduate teaching has remained influential in my teaching and scholarship, and I am most pleased to offer this essay as tribute to my much respected and well appreciated former teacher and colleague. Regrettably I do not read Coptic, nor does it appear that I ever shall, being fully occupied with the prosaic but all consuming advising, program planning, undergraduate and graduate teaching, committee work, public appearances, that constitute my current job as Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion in a large, urban, public university located on the fringes of the American South, yet very much in the heart of the Bible Belt. But strangely enough, Coptic has colored my teaching here in a way it never did while teaching in Canada, not the Coptic language itself precisely, but the largely Coptic corpus of the Nag Hammadi library (Robinson 1978). While studying these texts for the first time in Professor Wisse's graduate seminar on Gnosticism in fall 1983, I could not foresee how useful they would be, 20 years later, trying to instill a critical approach to the study of religious belief and practice here in Bible Belt, almost Southern, USA. In fact, if the success of one's academic training can be judged by how much a graduate student can directly transfer content from a course to his subsequent teaching, Fred Wisse's Gnosticism course comes out, without contest, on top, providing me with more raw teaching material than any other course taken during my graduate career. Although I teach in a public American university, hence ostensibly effecting the constitutional mandate of separation of Church and State, the student culture fully embodies the dominant culture of the region. This culture is a recently urbanized culture, a pious culture, and a thoroughly Christian culture. It is also a patriotic culture, right wing politically, in which being a good Christian and a good American
Synthesizing Durkheim’s notion of “sacred symbol” with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of “authent... more Synthesizing Durkheim’s notion of “sacred symbol” with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of “authenticity,” this paper proposes the theoretical construct, “authentic symbol,” to account for the symbolic function of Holocaust relics in contemporary Holocaust pilgrimage. The symbolic function of four kinds of relics (the sites, witness/survivors, human bodily remains and accessories) is examined and compared in three different contexts: The March of the Living Holocaust tours organized for Diaspora Jewish teenagers, the Masa tours organized for Israeli and practical aims of the tours and displays teenagers and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Different ritual experiences are found to predominate in each of the three contexts, which significantly correlate with how symbols are processed by participants and the different ideological.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2018
Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylo... more Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V.9. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2015
Four consecutive mishnayot , Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to e... more Four consecutive mishnayot , Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to end marriage and betrothal are examined through the lens of two overlapping theoretical frames, anthropology of the senses and legal aesthetics, in the process expanding traditional scholarly methodologies used to examine early rabbinic halakhah and the culture in which it emerged through the use of interdisciplinary theory. Using these theoretical frames, as yet unexploited as far as rabbinic halakhah is concerned, this study highlights the intersection of sensory experience and gender in rabbinic ideologies of marriage, through analysis of the language, rhetoric and formal structure of early rabbinic halakhic texts.
Élaboration de métriques basées sur la géométrie pour la planification de traitements en radiothé... more Élaboration de métriques basées sur la géométrie pour la planification de traitements en radiothérapie par modulation d'intensité à l'aide de l'analyse de frontières stochastiques Mémoire Marie-Chantal Gagné Maîtrise en physique-physique médicale Maître ès sciences (M.Sc.
This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cul... more This interdisciplinary study of gender in Avot de Rabbi Natan, using a theoretical frame from cultural anthropology, is an enterprise of feminist historiography. Focusing on ARNB's singular formulation of aggadic accounts of Eve's sin, it proposes a possible historical trajectory of Jewish women's experience and how that experience was perceived, manipulated and/or negotiated by the Jewish men who were the formulators and transmitters of rabbinic tradition. Generally speaking, traditions about women and gender in ARN demonstrate a stance on the natural, religious and social subordination of women to men, which I will designate “patriarchal stewardship.” Yet the Eve traditions, especially those in ARNB, go beyond articulating this androcentric stance on gender differentiation and social hierarchy; they negotiate a cognitive, religious problem: why do women, and women alone, suffer and die in the process of biological reproduction if “be fruitful and multiply” is a divine ...
Based upon fieldwork conducted in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, this paper explores ... more Based upon fieldwork conducted in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, this paper explores the way in which the disposition, display and commemoration of the dead create meaning for communities of the living. Using two theoretical frames, "the work of the dead," of Thomas Laqueur, and the Weberian cultural-historical notions of "disenchantment" and "reenchantment," the analysis centers on the recent reburial of one of the star mummies of the Catacombs, that of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombardi. Rosalia Lombardi's reburial, as well as recent forensic medical research undertaken in the Catacombs by teams of scientific experts, shows how the ideological influence and relevance of human dead to communities of the living are, in this instance, transformed from local, to transnational ideological and cultural arenas.
My diss ertation constitutes an experiment in methodology for the literary analysis of entire Rab... more My diss ertation constitutes an experiment in methodology for the literary analysis of entire Rabbinic compilations. I employ a method through which a literary analysis of individual units of a greater text enable us to explore the redactional problems of the text as a whole. The focus of my research is Avot de Rabbi Natan (ARN) , a Rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah Tractate Avot, \"i11ich hi:\',; berm pl'- e~;er-ved in t\fm elate(~t'~_el~sion s U:'lr~NA and AF\I\lE!). Pil. thout;)h the cm-e of Af:':N is Tarmaitic ~2(l(l-~) AD), both versions have undergone lengthy and separate transmission processes so that the texts in their present form cannot be considered so t~arl·l· My thesis research explores two different but related problems. The first problem directly concerns ARNA and AF\NB: the peculiar characteri s tics of each version that might shed light on their relationship and their different process of development. The second problem is much broader: the...
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2018
Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylo... more Book review: Marx, Dalia. Tractates Tamid, Middot and Qinnim: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V.9. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
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