Given your description of the panel discussion’s probable contents, something like your tentative suggestion (“Finding Your Niche”) sounds best, and that’s probably the one that would most pique my interest in learning more about and perhaps attending the session. “Finding Your Niche” seems to be most positive and most descriptive out of the suggestions you’ve listed. As one additional possibility, you could take the “scholar” language from some of your other ideas to title the session “Finding Your Niche in Biblical Scholarship.” That possibility may have both pros and cons in relation to “Niche in Biblical Studies,” but something like that slight adjustment of language might be something else that you could consider. Having seen your fuller description, however, I’ll be interested to see this session’s listing in the program book under whatever title it ends up being printed.

Howabout: “Getting Started in Biblical Studies: How to [1, 2 & 3]”

Or: “From Student to Scholar: finding your direction in the world of Biblical Studies”

???

Pat,

I think I get what you are doing, but I have a couple of questions for you. You seem to assume that entrants into the field have to settle down with a specialism. Is this just for the PhD? Or are you assuming something more long-term (e.g. being a Pauline scholar)? Personally, I might tend to agree with need for the former somewhat, but I don’t think I’d agree with the latter. Not everyone ends up as a Pauline person, or a Wisdom person. Some spread their wings a bit more than that. Even at the PhD stage, it can make sense to work on a broader range of material. My PhD was on Childs and the Sodom narrative, but I published on the DSS and the New Testament at the same time. Most of what I do now is Reception History, but not all of it by any means. Perhaps some would view that as shallow or confused (on many days I’d agree), but I don’t think specialism is a particular protection against such charges, and it does have its own costs. I guess where I am headed for with this is that a session which assumes that specialism is a must, or that specialism is required long-term has already skewed the discussion in one particular direction. It is possible to get on in Biblical Scholarship while staying broad–it is not necessarily a case of jack of all trades, master of none. You might need a clear identity to get a post, but how clear is a good question. I would have thought your session should also ask the question, how much specialism is needed, not simply assume that it is needed. So how about these, stealing almost all of David Stark’s suggestion: “Finding Your ‘Niche’ in Biblical Scholarship”; “Finding Your Niche in Biblical Scholarship?”; or “Getting ahead in Biblical Scholarship.”

Best wishes,

John

Thanks for your affirmation, David. By the way, I just found your blog today. Looks good!

Thanks for your probing insights, John! I am a hearty believer in a generalist approach, but I think grad students (on the whole) need to be specialists. Here’s a comment I included in my invite to potential panelists: “While any scholarly career will obviously have many twists and turns, this session is meant to address the need to find that initial starting gate.” So, yes, I’m largely talking about the Ph.D. dissertation. Not only that, though. For the graduate student, my experience thus far has been that if I didn’t have a fairly specific area to “cut my teeth on” then I wouldn’t get very deep into my scholarship. A bit like a case study for a broad theory. If you can’t apply your big intelligent theory to a specific case, what’s the use? What good are scholarly tools if you don’t use them on a particular problem?

But I do envision going in several different directions simultaneously in my (hopefully long) career in biblical studies, after I move past my initial steps.

Thanks, Bill.

Pat,
The “finding your niche” title would catch my attention best.

Thanks, Coleman. Good to have you visit.

You’re quite welcome, and thank you also, good sir.

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