Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus
Published: Jun 2006
£15.95 – £35.00
How does one read the story of Sarah and Hagar, or Jezebel and Rahab today, if one is a woman reader situated in a postcolonial society?
This is the question undergirding this work, which considers a selection of biblical texts in which women have significant roles. Employing both a gender and a postcolonial lens, it asks sharp questions both of the interests embedded in the texts themselves and of their impact upon contemporary women readers.
Whereas most postcolonial studies have been undertaken from the perspective of the colonized this work reads the texts from the position of a settler descendant, and is an attempt to engage with the disquietening and challenging questions that reading from such a location raises. Letters from early settler women in New Zealand, contemporary fiction, and personal reminiscence become tools for the task, complementing those traditionally employed in critical biblical readings.
Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus
£15.95 – £35.00
How does one read the story of Sarah and Hagar, or Jezebel and Rahab today, if one is a woman reader situated in a postcolonial society?
This is the question undergirding this work, which considers a selection of biblical texts in which women have significant roles. Employing both a gender and a postcolonial lens, it asks sharp questions both of the interests embedded in the texts themselves and of their impact upon contemporary women readers.
Whereas most postcolonial studies have been undertaken from the perspective of the colonized this work reads the texts from the position of a settler descendant, and is an attempt to engage with the disquietening and challenging questions that reading from such a location raises. Letters from early settler women in New Zealand, contemporary fiction, and personal reminiscence become tools for the task, complementing those traditionally employed in critical biblical readings.
An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text
Published: Nov 2005
£50.00
The real 'scandal' of the Bible, suggests Hugh Pyper, lies not in any salaciousness it may contain but in its deep impropriety as a venerable book, and the 'unsuitability' of its reality to the expectations of its readers.
This collection of essays, published and previously unpublished, will delight readers with its wit and profundity. Among them, 'The Selfish Text: Memetics and the Bible' deploys Richard Dawkins's notion of memes to advance the half-teasing, half-serious thesis that western culture is the Bible's way of making more Bibles, 'The Bible in Bloom' examines the usefulness or otherwise of Bloom's concept of the 'anxiety of influence' in biblical studies, and 'The Bible as Wolf: Tracking a Carrollian Metaphor in Biblical Studies', a tribute to Robert Carroll, the author's mentor, uncovers the polyvalence of the wolf metaphor in biblical and literary traditions and calls for the recovery of the 'wild' text.
Other papers are on women and silence (with a nod to Isak Dinesen and to Freud), on the violence in Lamentations as a deflection of anger from God and so a survival strategy for the community, and on modern 'gospels of Judas' which symptomize resentment against the canon.
An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text
£50.00
The real 'scandal' of the Bible, suggests Hugh Pyper, lies not in any salaciousness it may contain but in its deep impropriety as a venerable book, and the 'unsuitability' of its reality to the expectations of its readers.
This collection of essays, published and previously unpublished, will delight readers with its wit and profundity. Among them, 'The Selfish Text: Memetics and the Bible' deploys Richard Dawkins's notion of memes to advance the half-teasing, half-serious thesis that western culture is the Bible's way of making more Bibles, 'The Bible in Bloom' examines the usefulness or otherwise of Bloom's concept of the 'anxiety of influence' in biblical studies, and 'The Bible as Wolf: Tracking a Carrollian Metaphor in Biblical Studies', a tribute to Robert Carroll, the author's mentor, uncovers the polyvalence of the wolf metaphor in biblical and literary traditions and calls for the recovery of the 'wild' text.
Other papers are on women and silence (with a nod to Isak Dinesen and to Freud), on the violence in Lamentations as a deflection of anger from God and so a survival strategy for the community, and on modern 'gospels of Judas' which symptomize resentment against the canon.
Religion, Politics, Media in the Broadband Era
Published: July 2004
£15.00 – £40.00
Religion has gone public; and the much-discussed political pendulum has been swinging widely in its effort to keep up with the eruptions of faith swelling the broadband. Private faith finds very public outlets through the media's appetite for voices and choices. Faith-based networks have become media-savvy, urging their members to send barrages of emails, faxes, telephone calls, letters of praise or outrage to politicians. Those same politicians return the volley, using the broadcast media with great skill, wooing the faithful, convincing the cynical that God is on their side. Only a deity could be on so many sides simultaneously.
Alice Bach's new book reflects her long-time focus on the Bible, religion and culture. Popular religion is expressed within our culture in rock videos, televangelism, political rhetoric, children's books, films and animations. Every sort of media from print to electronic to broadband is imbued with subtle and blatant religious imagery. The media are new; the message is not. The tightly woven pattern of religion, politics and media has been part of the American fabric since the country was founded. When one examines this cultural cloth, threads of varying colours are revealed, threads whose twists reflect both media coverage of religion and religious views of the media.
Religion, Politics, Media in the Broadband Era
£15.00 – £40.00
Religion has gone public; and the much-discussed political pendulum has been swinging widely in its effort to keep up with the eruptions of faith swelling the broadband. Private faith finds very public outlets through the media's appetite for voices and choices. Faith-based networks have become media-savvy, urging their members to send barrages of emails, faxes, telephone calls, letters of praise or outrage to politicians. Those same politicians return the volley, using the broadcast media with great skill, wooing the faithful, convincing the cynical that God is on their side. Only a deity could be on so many sides simultaneously.
Alice Bach's new book reflects her long-time focus on the Bible, religion and culture. Popular religion is expressed within our culture in rock videos, televangelism, political rhetoric, children's books, films and animations. Every sort of media from print to electronic to broadband is imbued with subtle and blatant religious imagery. The media are new; the message is not. The tightly woven pattern of religion, politics and media has been part of the American fabric since the country was founded. When one examines this cultural cloth, threads of varying colours are revealed, threads whose twists reflect both media coverage of religion and religious views of the media.