Literary Allusion in the Bible (Book of Daniel): SBL/AAR 2012

One of my two proposals to SBL/AAR 2012 has been accepted, with the other still unreported. "SBL/AAR" is the annual meeting of two societies, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.

I will be presenting in the Book of Daniel consultation on "Allusion to Isaiah in Daniel 7-12, in Light of 35 Years of Allusion Criticism." The pitch is to look at the methodological disarray that characterizes the study of literary allusion in the Bible, and demonstrate how a commitment to greater clarity yields better readings and opportunity for more productive exchanges between scholars.

I see that Chris Jones has reawakened the Twitter hashtag #SBLAAR for reporting acceptances. What will you be doing in Chicago this November at SBL/AAR? And is anyone else still waiting for word on any of your proposals?

Reading-from-the-Page in Presentation: Crazy's Defense

Opinions about how to present effectively (or at least, not crashingly boringly) at the professional conferences come up perennially on the blogs, usually (for us Bible types) around the time of our November professional conference, but at other times as well. Other fields also make their own observations (h/t to Bitternsweet Girl).

Now, Dr. Crazy makes a thorough argument for the “reading from a piece of paper” model of presentation. Crazy is in literary studies, and most of her argument is directly relevant to what we usually do in biblical studies: present novel interpretations of literary source material that is already well known to our hearers.

As usual, Crazy’s post draws thoughtful comments, some of which challenge the distinction she makes between presentations of experiments (as in the sciences) and presentations as described above (as in literary and biblical studies, though I know our epigraphy and archaeology sections might fall more into the description-of-research mode).

Take a look. It’s never too soon to be thinking about the next conference. Does Crazy make you re-think the “reading a paper” mode of presentation favorably, even though that’s almost certainly not how you teach?

[Reading-from-the-Page in Presentation: Crazy's Defense was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/30. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

SBL 2009 Presentation

In this movie, I record the content of the presentation I gave to the section, “Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies,” at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (New Orleans, 2009).

The title of the presentation is, “‘…Even Bearing Gifts’: The Contribution of Distance Learning Strategies to the Brick-and-Mortar Classroom.”

The movie runs about 28 minutes. A list of the resources that I mention, including links to some of Michael Wesch’s content, can be found here: /educators/resources-from-presentation/

[wpvideo iBvX5H18]

Follow-Up: Lecturing Like Steve Jobs

I posted once before on the ways lecturers can learn from accomplished presenters; the prompt was an essay by Carmine Gallo about making presentations like Steve Jobs does.

Gallo’s book on the subject has become available: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs (Amazon). The book is inductive and practical: always beginning with specific examples of Jobs’ successes, Gallo names the strategies he sees working for Jobs and generalizes them for popular use. For example, Apple’s 1984 advertisement provides an antagonist against which to establish one’s product as the heroic protagonist. The principles isolated by Gallo are arranged into three “acts”: 1) Create the Story; 2) Deliver the Experience; 3) Rehearse and Refine.

This is not a become-interesting-quick manual. There is no five-step or 12-step program offered. Instead, 18 principles culled from Jobs’ most successful presentations are sensibly arranged for long-term study, experimentation, and practice.

As with the earlier weblink (which only scratches the surface of the content of the book), I find application to academic lecturing everywhere in the book. I will leave to a later post the question of whether teaching involves “selling” a subject matter. (Among the problems I see in that idea is the error-ridden notion that, if the prof fails to “sell” the student on the course material, then the student has the right not to “buy into” the course expectations.) I will provisionally claim, though, that lecturing includes an irreducible element of selling.

As we know, many Bible-bloggers are presenting at SBL/AAR New Orleans (thanks, Daniel and Tonya). In December, we’ll see a slough of posts about bad practices in academic presentations. Don’t let yours be among those examples! Instead, ask yourself now how Steve Jobs would present deuteronomistic editing in Jeremiah…or stratum 5a/4b at Megiddo…or gender-bending in the Joseph novella…or materes in late pre-exilic Hebrew inscriptions…or misogyny in military taunt genres…or…or….

Teaching Biblical Studies Like Steve Jobs

This weekend I read Carmine Gallo’s piece called, “Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs” (h/t to Akma). On the basis of the presentations by Jobs that he has reviewed, Gallo offers ten examples of the kinds of practices that make Jobs’ presentations so compelling.

We bibliobloggers usually wait until Thanksgiving weekend to gripe talk about what…makes…unsuccessful…presentations. But “presenting” is just a more palatable word for “lecturing,” and summer is a fine time to reflect on the teaching practices that we’ll be taking up in the fall.

Here, I copy the names of the practices Gallo lists (the bold-face phrases), but I describe them in terms of my experience with lecturing on topics in Hebrew Bible.

1. Set the Theme: Often, but not always, at the start. Don’t make the mistake of keeping it under wraps until it’s unveiled at the end: whatever ties the presentation together, whatever big idea I mean my students to go away with, I want to bring it in clearly and early, and reinforce it often.


2. Demonstrate Enthusiasm: Risk informality and the possibility of being ridiculed behind your back. It’s cool (and as infectious as hell) to be in love with an idea, or a text, or a discovery. For example, I love how features of El and Baal in Ugaritic religious texts help illuminate religio-political conflicts throughout the monarchical period in Israel and Judah. If you think what you’re saying is exciting, go ahead and bubble over a bit. No, a bit more: burn some calories. There, that’s it.


3. Provide an Outline: I give a written outline with lectures, though I am inclined to make it briefer and more spare this year than I have in the past. In any case, students have told me how much they depend on my giving clear indicators during the lecture about where we are in our itinerary.


4. Make Numbers Meaningful: To illustrate: does it matter whether Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in the 1950s or the 1850s? Or the 1650s? Does a social context of fire-hoses, Jim Crow, and “strange fruit” matter or no (over against Shadrach Minkins and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or “perpetual servitude” and partvs seqvitvr ventram)? Insofar as you think it matters for Dr. King, then how might the differences between the 8th, 6th, and 5th centuries matter as social contexts for particular words of the book of Isaiah, and how can those differences be made meaningful?


5. Try for an Unforgettable Moment: This may, but needn’t, correspond to the climax of the presentation. In your search for unforgettable moments, pay attention to student feedback. I remember learning that students were impersonating (behind my back, of course) my imitation of Israelite refugees fleeing southward in 722 B.C.E., frantically waving their copies of E, Hosea, the Elijah and Elisha narratives, and Exodus and Moses traditions. If they were impersonating it, then they were “getting it”: this may be a point in the presentation that I could sharpen into a planned unforgettable moment. Think big: could a colleague or student come in as a “special guest”? (Wellhausen? The Priestly writer?)


6. Create Visual Slides: Text shouldn't dominate: I use just enough text to show where I am in my outline, or to tick off Big Ideas. Often images alone are the way to go. Even with images, don’t feel tied to a literal or prosaic correspondence between the image and what you’re saying: abstract images or landscapes working in the background can create the desired atmosphere just fine. The idea is to create an imaginative space within which to arrange the spoken words.


7. Give ’em a Show: Entertainment has a structure, a flow: setting the scene; problem or conflict; rising tension; climax and resolution; denouement. A presentation may comprise one long arc, or a series of related arcs, but remember your hearers are sitting in chairs: for heaven’s sake, try to take them at least on an intellectual and emotional journey or journeys. (For example, a journey from the conventional wisdom of Proverbs or creation psalms, to the way Qohelet uses such conventional proverbs as a foil for his dissenting wisdom, to the guns-a’blazing blaspheming wisdom of Job 9 and 19, to a denouement reflecting on the pastoral goods of affirming the “blasphemous” anger that good people have against God in times of tragedy.)


8. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: For Gallo, the “small stuff” means technical glitches, and every teacher has her share of those. But there are other kinds of glitches: the student question that comes from far out in left field or that tries to hijack the thread; the total misunderstanding arising from a piece of wording that you had never realized was confusing; the quiz that runs late and that sets you fifteen minutes behind on the Most Important Lecture Evah. Students have been learning for centuries under the most preposterous of conditions, and ours will too.


9. Sell the Benefit: What are they going to be able to do that they couldn’t before? Will Brueggemann’s approach to “orientation and disorientation” in the Psalms allow them to integrate the imprecatory psalms into their pastoral ministry so that they quit telling people in pain to stop being angry? Will a frank recognition that Gen 1 and 2 order the creation of humans and beasts differently allow them to see that all texts (including the primeval story) invite certain kinds questions about God and the world while rebuffing others? Will quizzes and outlines on Bible content allow them not to look like total yutzes when their parishioners say, “I heard something weird about that one biblical story, where is that again?”


10. Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse: Surely we’ve all noticed that we are better the second time we lecture on a topic, and even better the third time. So, for a new presentation, why punish the first hearers with an unrehearsed draft?

A couple of bonus links: Dr. Crazy’s reflections on writing an article are written with an eye on conference papers; probably too focused on lit review for most teaching lectures, though. Also, here are Ten PowerPoint (or Keynote) Tips for Preparing a Successful Presentation.

What tips would you offer for creating presentations or lectures worthy of a Steve Jobs?

Distance Learning Strategies in the Brick-and-Mortar Classroom (SBL 2009)

My paper proposal has been accepted for the Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies section of the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). The working title is, “The Contribution of Distance Learning Strategies to Brick-and-Mortar Learning.”

This fall, I am again thoroughly revising my courses “Introduction to Old Testament” and “Elementary Hebrew I.” In this revision, I plan to focus on building the classes as online collaborating communities that happen also to meet for four hours each week in a physical classroom. This presentation at SBL will report on the use in the brick-and-mortar classroom of strategies still typically associated with distance learning: podcast lectures, course wikis, blogging, the use of Web resources for research and as grist for critical thinking, online groups, and so on. I am also interested in the use of existing social community platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking sites Delicious and Diigo, as alternatives to the more restrictive possibilities folded into Course Management Systems like BlackBoard.

As my plans come together, I will blog on the separate aspects of this plan, with a focus on how they might contribute to desired learning outcomes like critical thinking, taking ownership of learning, forming essential questions, collegiality, and the like.

In what ways do you think that the tools of distance learning offer unique possibilities for learning, beyond what has been possible in the physical classroom? How do you imagine putting such strategies to work in your brick-and-mortar or online classrooms?