| Submitted to Program Units |
|---|
| 1: Study of Judaism Unit |
This panel investigates multiple sites of meaning-making in Jewish thought, politics, and culture, from rituals and ceremonies in late antiquity to modern mystical discourses. The first paper views rabbinic literature within the context of late antique Greco-Roman medicine to ask how we might apply the “bio-looping” model of therapeutic intervention to rabbinic conceptions of embodiment. The second paper attends to midrash as an expressive practice of speech that affectively forms both public rhetorical culture and the individual political subjects within it. The third paper addresses medieval kabbalistic approaches to historical misfortune as cosmological attempts to position Jews as proactive agents of world-historical events. The fourth paper views the politics of mysticism through the lens of Jewish cultural history to consider the complexities of modern liberal political discourses. Taken together, these papers illuminate Jewish textual, affective, and political entanglements in order to shed new light on existing cultural and religious categories.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
This panel investigates multiple sites of meaning-making in Jewish thought, politics, and culture, from rituals and ceremonies in late antiquity to modern mystical discourses. The first paper views rabbinic literature within the context of late antique Greco-Roman medicine to ask how we might apply the “bio-looping” model of therapeutic intervention to rabbinic conceptions of embodiment. The second paper attends to midrash as an expressive practice of speech that affectively forms both public rhetorical culture and the individual political subjects within it. The third paper addresses medieval kabbalistic approaches to historical misfortune as cosmological attempts to position Jews as proactive agents of world-historical events. The fourth paper views the politics of mysticism through the lens of Jewish cultural history to consider the complexities of modern liberal political discourses. Taken together, these papers illuminate Jewish textual, affective, and political entanglements in order to shed new light on existing cultural and religious categories.