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2009 Ropes Lecture Series

The Bible and Contemporary Culture

The 2009 Ropes Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, investigates the diverse locations of the Bible’s contemporary cultural reception. All lectures will be held at 8:00 pm in ERC 427.

January 13, 2009: Scott Cairns

“Writing with Scripture: Midrashim and the Poetic,” by Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New & Selected, Recovered Body and Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven – A Pilgrimage, among other books.

January 27, 2009: Ken Stone

“Queer Reading Between Bible and Film: Paris Is Burning and the Legendary Houses of David and Saul,” by Ken Stone, author of Practicing Safer Texts:  Food, Sex and the Bible in Queer Perspective and Queer

                                         Commentary on the Hebrew Bible.

February 10, 2009: Erin Runions

“Regulating the Polis(sexual): Babylon as Political Symbol in U.S. Culture,” by Erin Runions, author of How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film and Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah.

February 17, 2009: James Wood

Lecture by James Wood, book critic at The New Yorker and author of The Broken Estate:  Essays on Literature and Belief, The Book Against God: A Novel, The Irresponsible Self: 

                                     On Laughter and the Novel, and How Fiction

                                     Works.

February 24, 2009: Martin Harries

“Lot's Wife, Anabaptists, and Farm Animals: Mike Kelley's Installation Petting Zoo, in Münster, 2007,” by Martin Harries, author of Forgetting Lot’s Wife: On Destructive Spectatorship and Scare Quotes from Shakespeare: Marx, Keynes, and the Language of Reenchantment.

March 3, 2009: David Maine

“Stairways to Heaven and Highways to Hell: Interpreting Biblical Tales for a Secular Age,” by David Maine, author of Fallen, The Preservationist, Samson and Monster 1959.