Research /

Current Research

Active, purposeful "research" intended for publication is, for the most part, the last thing on my mind these days. But I am working on an article for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, on the "Cult of the Dead." In that area, I have just finished reading After Life in Roman Paganism by Franz Cumont.

Besides this, at present I am worrying instead about caring for my home and family, my physical fitness, preparing for classes, socializing with friends, and completing administrative tasks for work.

So many different topics interest me, I am forced by lack of time to explore them piecemeal. Moreover, not for lack of desire, I cannot always acquire and utilize the best resources, or follow the latest scholarly conversations in a given area. Nevertheless, exploring things to the depth of my abilities and using the limited resources available to me through libraries or the public domain of the web or booksellers, I ask my questions and pursue my answers.

Technically, the ad hoc methods I use and the variety of interests I pursue makes me a Dilettante in the eyes of many of my scholarly peers. Setting me apart from the crowd of dilettantes are only, I suppose, my philological training, my experience as a researcher, and my unique critical perspective.

At present (Spring 2009) I'm working on tropes of "ancestors" in politics, family, and ritual in the Greco-Roman era. I'm studying Lucian ?, and Plautus ? and Cicero ? and Homer ?'s Odyssey and other Greco-Roman classics. I'm reading Josephus slowly and with extra reflection, and also thinking about Eschatology ?. I want to know more about the history of Higher Criticism and am thinking about Spinoza and David Friedrich Strauss and Ferdinand Christian Baur ?.

For my interest in more current, or cultural, or political, or ephemeral topics, see my blog eschata.