Ritual in the Biblical World

Call For Papers: The Ritual in the Biblical World section will have two planned sessions of papers at the 2016 Annual Meeting. 1) The first session will be an open session inviting papers on the topics of Incantations and Curses and the theory and methods utilized in analyzing such rituals. Incantations and curses are ritualized speech forms that intend to affect certain outcomes. As such, they have intriguing similarities to other ritual speech forms, and like other rituals, they can fail or go awry. 2) The second section will include invited papers from established ritual scholars to explore the theoretical framework of ritual failure. The topic of Ritual Failure is less explored because analysts tend to consider rituals in terms of what they are supposed to do and how they are meant to achieve their results. There is a tendency toward idealism in the analyses. Ritual Failure is, however, an integral part of many ritual systems, seen in their larger context. The topic deserves careful scrutiny but has been largely neglected, even by scholars in our unit. We intend to bridge that gap in this session. Submission for papers on this topic are also invited for the open session, as the section intends to deal with this topic for several meetings, including the coming International Meeting in Seoul.

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