Faculty Notes

Robert Blitt was named the Toms Foundation Distinguished Professor of Law at the College of Law in 2021. Highlights of Blitt’s writing during this period included a policy brief published by the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. The brief explores how amendments to Russia’s constitution are likely to cement the Kremlin’s use of religion as a soft power foreign policy lever.

J.P. Dessel was re-elected to a second term as the president of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. During his first term, he oversaw a complete renovation of the Institute’s historic building (constructed in 1925). Last summer, due to Covid, Tell Abel Beth Ma’acah, like many Israeli archeological sites, had a short season using local Israelis as volunteers. Tell Tayinat in Turkey also had a short study season in late July and August, with a very small staff.   Professor Dessel and a few colleagues started a podcast, This Week in the Ancient Near East. It began as a way of breaking the pandemic isolation and “talking shop,” and unexpectedly became sort of popular (It's a top ten history podcast in Belgium). They have recorded 33 episodes and have over 6,000 downloads. The intent is to highlight exciting archaeological finds and research, adding a healthy dose of humor to the proceedings. Professor Dessel continues to teach numerous classes in Judaic Studies including Biblical Archeology and Ancient Jewish History.

Rob Heller, School of Journalism and Electronic Media Professor, has been selected as the fourth recipient of the College of Communication & Information Board of Visitors Professorship. The BOV Professorship was made possible by generous gifts from donors including current and emeritus members of the college's Board of Visitors. The three-year rotating professorship was established to recognize and reward outstanding CCI faculty members whose research, creative activity, teaching, and academic and professional service have uniquely contributed to the mission of the school, the college and the university.

Daniel H. Magilow has been named, along with Helene Sinnreich, a co-editor-in-chief of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's academic journal. Next June, he will also be working with the USHMM as the co-director of the 2022 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar, which the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the USHMM runs each year to help faculty and advanced graduate students who are teaching, or preparing to teach, Holocaust or Holocaust-related courses in all academic disciplines. The seminar's theme will be "Teaching Holocaust Photographs." This past November, Magilow helped organize, again with Sinnreich, the 2021 Lessons and Legacies Regional Meeting in Knoxville, a regional Holocaust Studies conference. The Lessons and Legacies conference was supported by the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, on whose Academic Advisory Council Magilow currently serves. Magilow has recently given multiple talks on topics related to his current research, such as the phenomenon of taking selfies at Holocaust memorials and the use of Holocaust photographs as trophies. At the 2021 conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in Chicago, he also presented a pedagogically oriented talk about teaching documentary film during the pandemic. His article "Shoah Selfies, Shoah Selfie Shaming, and Social Photography in Sergei Loznitsa's Austerlitz (2016)" appeared in the summer 2021 issue of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. His scholarly edition of the writings of the German New Objectivity photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch is forthcoming next fall with Getty Publications.

Tina Shepardson remains head of the Department of Religious Studies and was happy to have her Lindsay Young Professorship renewed for another two years last spring. She has had an unusually productive year in terms of publications, with a volume on Religious Rivalry in Late Antiquity she co-edited and contributed an essay to released last fall, and a volume she co-edited on Syriac Christianity released this winter, in addition to an article on religious boundaries and the language of contagion that was published last winter. She also submitted an essay on “Jews and Christians in Pagan Antiquity” that she co-authored with Paula Fredriksen, which is forthcoming, as is another article on Jews and anti-Judaism in the city of Antioch from the fourth through sixth centuries. She continues to give talks on her scholarship locally, nationally, and internationally, including a keynote address for St. Louis University last spring and an invited talk on “Synagogues, Churches and Heretics” for the national Westar Christianity Seminar, among others. She looks forward to being able to travel more easily again in the year ahead when she has been invited to Toronto and Ottawa in addition to several national conferences. She continues to love the chance to teach in the classroom and the community, and in the past year led a public book discussion with Erin Darby on The Bible With and Without Jesus and gave talks on “When Jesus was Jewish” and “From Jewish-Christians to Christian Anti-Judaism” to the Knoxville community, as well as being a panelist on “How to Disrupt Racism and Anti-Blackness in Academia” for the Critical Race Collective’s annual symposium on campus. The challenges of the times we are in make us even more grateful for our wonderful colleagues and students and for the supporting community around us.