Department of Religious Studies
The Religious Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania offers a program of undergraduate education in humanistic studies appropriate for many careers and walks of life and extensive opportunities to those who wish to become scholars and teachers in the field in its graduate program. Both programs offer courses in major religious traditions, religion and culture, religion and society, and theories of religion. The primary emphasis of the program is upon understanding through interpretation. Thus the focus of the program is upon the descriptive, historical, critical and theoretical work that engages every interpreter of religion.
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Publication A Digital Partnership: Penn Museum and Ojibwe Tribal Historians(2007-02-12) Powell, Timothy B; Aitken, LarryIn January 2007, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a grant to the Penn Museum in collaboration with tribal historians and language teachers from the White Earth, Leech Lake, and Fond du Lac bands of the Ojibwe Nation in northern Minnesota. This partnership—entitled Gi Bugadin-a-maa Goom (Ojibwe: “To Sanction, to Give Authority, to Bring to Life”)—offers an exciting glimpse into how digital technology can be utilized to benefit the Museum and Ojibwe communities on equal terms.Publication 100 Years of JQR and Rabbinic Judaism(2010-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BIn this issue we continue our celebration of the Jewish Quarterly Review's first century on American soil. This issue focuses on classical and rabbinic Judaism. Considering the topic, a certain question arises: To what extent is the very enterprise of Jewish studies a fundamentally rabbinic one? And yet, perusing the tables of contents of the preceding four hundred or so issues, the precise place of rabbinics remains strangely elusive.Publication Name Calling: Thinking About (the Study of) Judaism in Late Antiquity(2009-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BJewish Late Antiquity is a notoriously difficult period to see clearly; not only is the evidence sparse and idiosyncratic but the stakes are high and our lenses are perennially clouded. After all, the first centuries of the Common Era are the cradle of both Christianity and classical Judaism. The significance of this era is of intense and decidedly proprietary interest to many contemporary scribes no less than it was to ancient polemicists and practitioners. The methodological and confessional biases that inform the history of this period are, if not different in kind, then perhaps distinguished in degree from those that inflect all historical endeavors. The dangers posed, while hardly new to the field, are nonetheless persistent: we still need to sort out the very language and terms with which we do our work.Publication Introduction: Rethinking Romanness, Provincializing Christendom(2013-01-01) Yoshiko Reed, Annette; Dohrmann, Natalie BIn histories of ancient Jews and Judaism, the Roman Empire looms large. For all the attention to the Jewish Revolt and other conflicts, however, there has been less concern for situating Jews within Roman imperial contexts; just as Jews are frequently dismissed as atypical by scholars of Roman history, so Rome remains invisible in many studies of rabbinic and other Jewish sources written under Roman rule. Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire brings Jewish perspectives to bear on long-standing debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity. Focusing on the third to sixth centuries, it draws together specialists in Jewish and Christian history, law, literature, poetry, and art. Perspectives from rabbinic and patristic sources are juxtaposed with evidence from piyyutim, documentary papyri, and synagogue and church mosaics. Through these case studies, contributors highlight paradoxes, subtleties, and ironies of Romanness and imperial power.Publication Means and End(ing)s: Nomos Versus Narrative in Early Rabbinic Exegesis(2016-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BRabbinic literature shares a suggestive array of literary features with later Latin literary sources: commentary, fragmentation and quotation, and a granular attention to language. In this material narrative tends to be lost; classical source texts, such as Vergil, are fetishized, broken apart, and repurposed. In this essay I ask of one corpus--early rabbinic midrash (biblical commentary)--what is the origin and impact of its fragmented and finally incoherent narrative project? At the risk of over-simplifying, I will focus on the rabbis as a case study in the etiology of a more general phenomenon. I will argue that the fragmentation so typical of aggadic midrash is the result of the application of a specifically legal hermeneutic to nonlegal, specifically narrative, sources. As a result, rabbinic midrash beginning in the third century consistently undercuts its own narrative aims. Metaliterary, anthologized, pastiched, commentarial forms become standard in the late antique Roman repertoire, with rabbinic texts we can historicize and contextualize one such transformation, and in so doing center law, legal thinking and forms into literary genealogies.Publication Can “Law” Be Private? The Mixed Message of Rabbinic Oral Law(2015-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BA great deal of ink has been spilled on the question of early rabbinic literary culture and the rabbinic dedication to the development of an explicitly oral legal tradition. In this essay I will argue that given that the manifest content of early rabbinic discourse is law, it is productive to look to the very public practices of communication inscribed, literally and figuratively, in the Roman legal culture of the east. Within this context, the rabbinic legal project makes sense as a form of provincial shadowing of a dominant Roman legal culture. This paper will explore the paradoxical rabbinic deployment of the most public of Roman genres, law, in a manner explicitly coded as private. How does one make sense of the public aspirations of rabbinic law with its choice to remain unwritten and therefore largely invisible in the imperial landscape of the rabbinic city?Publication Introduction to The Singing Bird: A Cherokee Novel(2007-01-01) Powell, Timothy BJohn Milton Oskison was a mixed-blood Cherokee known for his writing and his activism on behalf of Indian causes. The Singing Bird, never before published, is quite possibly the first historical novel written by a Cherokee. Set in the 1840s and '50s, when conflict erupted between the Eastern and Western Cherokees after their removal to Indian Territory, The Singing Bird relates the adventures and tangled relationships of missionaries to the Cherokees, including the promiscuous, selfish Ellen, the "Singing Bird" of the title. The fictional characters mingle with such historical figures as Sequoyah and Sam Houston, embedding the novel in actual events. The Singing Bird is a vivid account of the Cherokees' genius for survival and celebrates Native American cultural complexity and revitalization. Jace Weaver is the author of Other Words: American Indian Literature, Law, and Culture and That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community. Timothy B. Powell is author of Ruthless Democracy: A Multicultural Interpretation of the American Renaissance. John Milton Oskison (1874-1947) was a distinguished New York editor and published five books, including Tecumseh and His Times. Melinda Smith Mullikin is a former media editor for The New Georgia Encyclopedia. (Key Words: Cherokee Indians, American Indians, Native Americans, Fiction, John Milton Oskison, Melinda Smith Mullikin, Timothy B. Powell, Jace Weaver).Publication The Boundaries of the Law and the Problem of Jurisdiction in an Early Palestinian Midrash(2003-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BIn this paper I look at one particular exegetical complex through which, I will argue, the rabbis grapple with the question of legal jurisdiction and the status of revelation in the shadow of Roman legal hegemony. I will try to show that rabbinic midrash in its literariness (that is, as a source for the history of ideas, rather than a repository of more or less viable data for reporting history on the ground) is a valuable site for mining the mentalité of tannaitic culture (to the extent that we can posit such a thing), and specifically of tannaitic constructions of the idea of the law from the perspective of the subaltern.Publication Digital Repatriation in the Field of Indigenous Anthropology(2011-10-01) Powell, Timothy BAs the term “digital repatriation” gains wider circulation, it has come under increased scrutiny and criticism. At the 2010 AAA Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Kim Christen convened an Executive Program Committee session entitled “After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge.” Despite abundant examples of how digital technology creates opportunities for working in partnership with indigenous communities, questions focused on the inadequacies of the term “digital repatriation.” Panelist Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh (Denver Museum of Nature and Science) stated the problem most succinctly by recounting that the Native communities he worked with always wanted to know if “digital repatriation” meant that they were going to get the original materials back. The answer, of course, was no.Publication Capital Punishment: Judaism(2009-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie BThe Bible specifies capital punishment for a wide range of crimes against both God and man. Distinct and paradoxical political realia, however, circumscribe its interpretation and implementation in postbiblical Judaism.Capital jurisdiction is a test case of political autonomy, and in the postbiblical era, full Jewish political autonomy has been limited to the Second Temple era and the State of Israel. In Second Temple Judaism, executions fell primarily under the jurisdiction (or discretion) of the sovereign, such as Alexander Jannaeus or Herod. Any ties understood to have existed between executions and biblical strictures are unclear.