PSCO
Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins
an Interdisciplinary Humanities Seminar
in its fiftieth-eighth year under the auspices of
The University of Pennsylvania
Department of Religious Studies
201 Cohen Hall, Philadelphia PA 19104
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PSCO Presentation: 10 April, 2008
Panel Discussion: "Mesopotamia"
Michael Pregill (Elon University)
Annette Yoshiko Reed (University of Pennsylvania)
The sixth PSCO meeting is scheduled for Thursday, 10 April 2008, in the 2nd floor Lounge of Logan Hall at the University of Pennsylvania (36th St walkway, just north of Spruce Street). Those wishing to dine together before the seminar will meet at 6 pm in the Logan Lounge to go next door to the food court in Houston Hall.
This meeting will turn to focus on focusing on Mesopotamia and consider the theme of "tracing" by considering the afterlives of "Jewish-Christian" traditions in early Islam (picking up on John Reeves' comments at our introductory meeting). Michael Pregill and Annette Reed will share some of the results of their collaborative project — "From the Throne of Moses to the Chair of Ali: Intersections of Jewish Christianity and Islam in Late Antique Mesopotamia."
Michael Pregill (BA Columbia; MTS Harvard; PhD Columbia) is Distinguished Emerging Scholar and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University. His area of specialization is the Quran and Islamic exegetical literature (tafsir), and early Islamic history and culture in general. His current research focuses on Muslim perceptions and portrayals of Jews in the early Islamic period and the cross-cultural ramifications of prophecy in Late Antiquity. His dissertation was a study of the Golden Calf episode in the Quran and early Muslim exegetical literature.
Annette Yoshiko Reed (BA McGill; MTS Harvard; PhD Princeton) is Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at Penn and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her publications include The Ways that Never Parted (ed. with A.H. Becker; 2003), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (ed. with R.S. Boustan; 2004), and Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (2005).
Dining
As usual, those wishing to dine together before the seminar will meet at 6:00 pm in the Logan Lounge to go next door to the food court in Houston Hall.
Suggested Readings
- Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, books I, II, and III (esp. portions on the True Prophet and Law of Syzygy)
- The History of al-Tabari, Vol. XXI: The Victory of the Marwanids. Trans. M. Fishbein. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997, 67-73.
- R. Stephen Humphreys, "Qur'anic Myth and Narrative Structure in Early Islamic Historiography," in Clover and Humphreys, eds., Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, 271-290.