This article surveys the range of Hebrew words and phrases employed in a selection of narrative, legal and poetic texts to describe forcible, non-consensual sexual intercourse—what we would today label ‘rape’. While no legal or technical term for rape exists in Biblical Hebrew, the article maintains that such a translation is appropriate in certain cases. Each rendering of ‘rape’, however, depends on a thorough analysis of the vocabulary utilized, word order and other textual clues, as well as on a careful balancing of the social and cultural world of the text with the need to communicate content effectively in English.
An extended set of conversations conducted by three religious studies faculty teaching at large public universities in the Southern United States spurred these reflections on how their institutional locations inflected issues such as the cultural expectations students bring to the classroom, how these expectations interact with the evolving priorities of religious studies departments, and how these factors affect the balance among the various subfields of religious studies and theology that make up such departments.What cultural expectations do students from particular places bring to religious studies classrooms in public universities? How do these expectations interact with the evolving priorities of religious studies departments? How should these factors affect the balance among the various subfields of religious studies and theology that make up such departments? Surely these are questions that many kinds of teachers can benefit from pondering, and we do not claim to address them in any comprehensive or authoritative way in this article. Nor do we recommend approaching the practical challenges these questions pose with any one-size-fits-all formula. Nevertheless we believe we can contribute useful insights to discussions of these interlocking issues. Through a series of structured conversations we came to pose the above questions in sharp relief and deepen our reflections about them -starting from our shared teaching experiences in public universities in the Southern United States. The purpose of this article is to share some of the insights we gained.In the summer of 2005, the Wabash Center for Teaching Theology and Religion convened its first Colloquy for Mid-Career Faculty Teaching Religion at Colleges and Universities. Among the twenty participants and staff, the three of us (Sandie Gravett of Appalachian State University, Mark Hulsether of the University of Tennessee, and Carolyn Medine of the University of Georgia), found ourselves telling similar stories in discussions on teaching despite our significant differences in training and scholarly specializations. The common link appeared obvious. We all worked in large public universities in the Southeast. During the course of many meetings over a three year period -both in the original colloquy and a follow-up project in which the three of us worked with colleagues from our home institutions -we discovered that our teaching landscape shaped our experience as instructors in ways that were distinctive,
IN THE CLASSROOM
Conversation
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