Redescribing Christian Origins (RCO) will be hosting three sessions at the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting.
Two of our sessions will address the themes of ethics, research methodology and historiography. The first asks how we can best approach the study of religion in an inclusive and ethical manner. The second challenges categories of canon and canonicity.
Our third session will review Robyn Faith Walsh’s recent book The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Our panels will include a combination of invited speakers and panelists selected through the CFP process.
RCO subscribes to SBL’s Professional Conduct Policy and is committed to SBL’s core values, particularly those of critical inquiry, inclusivity, accountability, and professionalism.
(1) Redescribing Historiography: Legacies and Possibilities
This session acknowledges and analyzes legacies within academia that have authorized and promoted unjust, exploitative, or otherwise damaging power dynamics in the study of religion. We invite papers that both confront these legacies and offer new ways forward, constituting a more ethical academic practice and historiography.
Among the many possible questions this session might ask are: What constitutes an ethical approach to method/theory in the study of religion, particularly in the study of so-called Christian origins? How do we write an ethically responsible history? Whose stories should we consider? How do we dismantle abusive legacies? How do we confront the implicit – and explicit – antisemitic, racist, and misogynist approaches and discourses that are endemic to the field?
Please submit proposals via the SBL system; for any questions, please feel free to reach out to the RCO chairs.
(2) Transgressing “Canon”: Redescribing Categories and Approaches
This session brings together papers that de-center, disavow, transgress, or otherwise interrogate the concept of "canon," in contexts both ancient and modern. We invite papers that reconsider how “non-” or “extra-canonical” texts and materials were formative for early Christianity and/or how historiography of the Christian past assumes and reifies the centrality of canon, broadly conceived.
We also invite papers that jointly interrogate dominant scholarly legacies that contribute to creating certain intellectual "canons” in the field; topics along these lines might include (1) reconsidering the influence and “canonicity” of schools of thought or representative figures like Jonathan Z. Smith and others; (2) a reconsideration of methods and evidence traditionally marginalized in the field (e.g., experiential approaches, etc); (3) a reformulation of concepts like “Christian origins” before canon.
This session is presented in conjunction with the Meals in the Greco-Roman World session, which will be hosting their own joint programming on non-canonical gospels and meals.
Please submit proposals via the SBL system; for any questions, please feel free to reach out to the RCO chairs.
(3) The Origins of Early Christian Literature Review Panel
This panel will invite speakers to review Robyn Faith Walsh’s book The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Co-sponsored by SSCNT and Interrelations of the Gospels sections.
For questions, please contact RCO affiliate and program committee member Sarah Rollens.
