David Schloen
Office: OI 226C
Email: d-schloen@uchicago.edu
Associate Professor of Syro-Palestinian Archaeology
Education:
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1995.
Background:
I am from Canada originally. I went to the University of Toronto for undergraduate studies in Computer Science. It was exclusively a science curriculum. I worked as a computer programmer for a number of years and then decided I was much more interested in ancient history, archeology and biblical studies. So I went to graduate school, first to seminary and then to Harvard University where I got a Ph.D. in Syro-Palestinan Archeology and Hebrew Bible. In 1994 I was finishing my dissertation and was hired here at the UC as an instructor for one year. After I finished the Ph.D. in 1995 I was appointed assistant professor. I've been here ever since. I am currently an associate professor of Syro-Palestinian Archeology.
I was involved with the Committee on Jewish Studies from its inception. I was invited to participate in the original discussions that lead to the formation of the committee with John Collins and Martha Roth. John Collins, who was at that time in the Divinity School, now he is teaching at Yale. Martha Roth who is our professor of Syrology, was involved in the early stages of the committee. And I thought biblical archeology and my particular interests in Ancient Israel would be relevant.
So I have been involved in the committee and found it to be a valuable forum for meeting other faculty members and students who are involved in various aspects from the most ancient beginning to the present. I don't think I would have met many of those people had I not been involved in the committee. And from the point of view of teaching, the committee was formed as a degree granting committee with the idea that there were topics and approaches that did not fit well to any existing departmental program. And that the Committee on Jewish Studies would be an appropriate venue to pursue a Ph.D. here at the university.
I was involved with setting up the curriculum several years ago for a particular track within the Committee on Jewish Studies called the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. And that was an example of the kind of program that was difficult to do at any existing degree program. In the Near Eastern Department, where I teach, there is no one who could study the Hebrew Bible certainly and especially from a philological and linguistic point of view. One would also, in this department, be able to do a great deal with other ancient Near Eastern language topics. One would not have room in the program in this department for extensive work on exegesis or close interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in terms of its themes or theology or history of religion. That would be something more commonly done in the Divinity School in terms of the long standing division of labor in the university. But the Divinity School's Bible Program did not, at least not at that time, allow students to really engage rigorously and ostensibly with ancient Near Eastern backgrounds and languages. So there was an example, several years ago, of a gap we thought we could fill so we offered that program.
The idea was that we would have students focusing on ancient periods including the Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern background for it. We would also have students focus on medieval topics, modern topics and this has been - in terms of curriculum- formulized in the last year.
How is interdisciplinary study within the Committee beneficial:
I have mixed feelings on it actually. I am of two minds. I tend to think more that people should get their grounding in a conventional discipline and from there reach out into other disciplines at a point in which their own discipline fails to be responsive to their own object of interests.
Topics become interesting when they start to strain the resources of a discipline. In a way you can only start to feel the strain of the resources in your discipline if you begin with that discipline. So if you begin in literary studies and you find that the concepts of the available modes of analysis are too limiting to be responsive to the text in a way that you think is relevant, then you need other languages, more history, more philosophy, a better understanding of the religious background. That is when interdisciplinary becomes urgent.
So my basic feeling is that interdisciplinary is to be held in its urgency when disciplinary resources start to give out, rather than just jumping in to this interdisciplinary matrix which is I think a confusing way to begin. It's a very rich place to end up, but I don't know if it is the best place to begin. I think of the Jewish Studies faculty as being these group of people who help to shape what's developed in new modes of responsiveness to objects that are nonetheless, at least at first seem, to be located in recognized disciplines. So if somebody is doing analysis of biblical texts and they begin theologically and historically, something is emerging in their work that requires resources of literary analysis that aren't practiced in the theological tradition of biblical scholarship. Then the Jewish studies faculty is there to help guide and cultivate this extensionality. Also once you've gotten to Rosenzweig and let's say, for example, you're basically interested in rabbinics. You are going to go back and read those rabbinic texts different because of the way the tradition has been appropriated. So in a certain sense it is also about generating new perspectives and then returning.
What will you be teaching:
B. A. major program sponsored by the committee next year will have Jewish Civilization sequence which is divided into two parallel sequences: Jewish Thought and Literature and Jewish History and Society. The Jewish History and Society sequence will be offered for the first time next year and I will do the ancient part.
Also:
The Ancient Israel from Iron Age to Roman Era
In Winter 2008: Medieval Jewish Society
In Spring 2008: Auslander will be teaching European Jewry as Diasporic Culture.
So those will be an interesting complement to what will be offered simultaneously in the Jewish Thought and Literature sequence in the college. It typically covers introduction to Hebrew Bible cross listed with the Divinity School and serves as the first quarter of Jewish Thought and Lit. And then the winter quarter this year was taught by Professor Stern. And then in the spring there will be a course on Modern Jewish Thought and Literature.
What type of student would benefit working with you:
People interested in Ancient Israel, which is an area in which I am trained and have an interest. Most of my interests are actually pre-Biblical. Students who wanted to do some sort of work on the history or society of ancient Israel; including in that the Second Temple Period. So anyone who is interested in the history and society of ancient Israel should talk to me or take a course with me.
What are you working on/written:
- The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2001).
- "Archaeological Data Models and Web Publication Using XML," Computers and the Humanities 35 (2001): 123-152.
- "William F. Albright and the Origins of Israel," Near Eastern Archaeology 65/1 (2002): 56-62.
- "The Iron Age State as a State of Mind," in One Hundred Years of American Archaeology in the Middle East., ed. D. R. Clark and V. H. Matthews. Boston, Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2003.