Writing Esther, Then and Now: The Materiality of the Megillah in Ritual, Memory, and Biblical Interpretation (Dissertation, Duke University)
My dissertation, Writing Esther, unpacks the materiality of the Esther scroll in Jewish life. I show how midrash, liturgy, and scribal rituals conflate the acts of writing in the scroll with the copying of the scroll. Though my home discipline is biblical studies, like the starship Voyager this dissertation travels through the strange quadrants of ritual studies, Jewish liturgy, book history, midrash, scribal practices, material religion, and art history. And just as Captain Janeway brought crucial data back to Starfleet, I use these interdisciplinary connections to show how Jews have used the written artifact to think through the Book of Esther’s pivotal theological questions: the ambiguity of God’s presence or absence, the morality of the Jews’ violence in the context of the eternal war with Amalek, and debates over Esther’s relative agency or action.
My main advisor is Dr. Laura Lieber, but I am working a great deal with the scholarship of the Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts (SCRIPT). I have presented this research at the Society for Biblical Literature (2021), the Association for Jewish Studies (2022), and the North Carolina Jewish Studies Seminar (2022). Parts of it have been published in Hebrew Studies, Postscripts, and Religions.
Sensory Letters: Religion and Language in the Art of Martin Wenham (Cascade Books)
Although many religions posit that God is beyond description and mystical experience of God is ineffable, religious sages, priests, and prophets have also produced some of the world’s most complex language to communicate those ineffable experiences and that indescribable reality. This project reflects on the connections between language and religion through the work of British lettering artist Martin Wenham. Alongside careers in education and research science, Wenham has spent over four decades honing his craft as a lettering artist, known especially for painted and carved lettering on wood. Wenham uses his art to explore words which capture his attention, including sacred texts such as the Psalms, George Herbert, Job, Christopher Smart, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Common Prayer.
I use Wenham’s work to reflect on the materiality of sacred language, the importance of making old words fresh, the limits of language and negative theology, and the connections between religious metaphors and the body. More broadly, this book argues that the depth and richness of contemporary calligraphy is not just ‘beautiful writing’ or precise penmanship, but an artform which mines the depths of hallowed words to meditate on enduring human questions and concerns—in this case, the possibilities and limits of language as part of religion.
Seeds for this project have been laid in brief articles on Wenham’s works in The Christian Century and in the virtual exhibit Visual Music. I have also presented on Wenham’s work for the American Academy of Religion (2022).
Religion, Language, and Calligraphic Art (Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts)
This brief monograph, in an earlier stage of research but already under contract with Brill, reflects more broadly on religions and sacred texts in Roman-alphabet calligraphy and lettering arts. Here, I will use contemporary works of lettering arts to explore the nature of language as it intersects with theologies, religious practices, spaces, and rituals. This volume explores this intersection through six themes: creativity and the Creator, liturgy and performance, materiality and language, memorials and names, words as direction and orientation, and the limits of language for religious expression. Each theme is explored through case studies of particular calligraphic artworks and artists, all drawn from the revival of Roman-alphabet calligraphy from the early twentieth century to the present day.
More broadly, this book invites others to study this artform, and introduces some of its key books, artists, and collections.