Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures

Call For Papers: This year we will have three sessions. The first is a discussion of _Islands, Islanders, and the Bible: Ruminations_ (Eds. Jione Havea, Margaret Aymer, and Steed Vernyl Davidson; SBL Press, 2015).This invited panel will provide ideological, contextual, and perspectival analyses and reflections on (select) essays from the book. The second will be an open session on tourism and islands. The exoticization of islands as tourist destinations occludes the permanence of occupancy and fluid citizenship. It constructs islands as places of conflictual oppositions. The sun is a fixed orb. The sea laps and moves on. Sand is a temporary guard. Coral reefs are vulnerable and susceptible to ships and detritus. How does this unstable cluster throw up multiple hermeneutic postures? We invite papers that explore tourism as a concrete reality with conceptual potential for the interpretation of sacred texts - Canonical, Apocryphal, Cultural/Artefactual, and Pseudepigraphic. The third session is an invited panel discussion on Modern Palestine and the Bible. Biblical scholars and theologians from on the ground and from outside of Israel-Palestine will present their views on the relation between biblical scholarship and "Palestine" (holy land, native people, religious heritage). How has biblical scholarship engaged (or not engaged) Palestine? To what extent have biblical scholars (dead or alive) appreciated and/or avoided Palestine? What might have been their motivations? What has Palestine to offer biblical scholarship? The members of the panel will draw attention to different ways in which Palestine is more than just archaeological, pilgrimage, tourist, ideological, occupied, impoverished, invented and/or contested site(s).

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