I have just learned that I have been awarded the major grant that I applied for: the Graduate Research Mentorship. The program provides a large stipend (even more than a TAship) and tuition remission. In the age of California’s budgetary apocalypse, student protests over UC tuition hikes, and my department’s inability to pay for copies of classroom handouts, I am dumbstruck by my good fortune. The UCLA Graduate Division describes the program:

The Graduate Research Mentorship (GRM) Program is designed to assist students in acquiring and developing advanced research skills under faculty mentorship. The Program is open to doctoral students in the humanities, social sciences and other disciplines where students have little opportunity for academic apprentice appointments or other University funding relevant to their graduate training. An expected outcome is to increase the number of students who complete the PhD degree and who show promise as candidates for faculty appointments. Faculty mentors are expected to be in the same locale as the student participants and assist them with research leading to the development of a doctoral dissertation.

My project will deal with the social functions of apocalyptic thought in early Christian communities. My mentor will be Ra’anan Boustan. I explained in my proposal, “The topic of apocalyptic thought is a particularly nebulous research area, for which ten-week seminars do not provide ample time for processing. Working closely with Prof. Boustan on the relevant concepts and scholarship for an entire year would offer an invaluable opportunity in terms of my progress in the program and my ability to develop original insights in my field.” For me, this program will come on the heels of my participation in the summer version of this grant (the “Graduate Summer Research Mentorship”) with my advisor, Scott Bartchy, on a related topic this summer.

The downside of taking this grant is that it means I will not teach next year. I love teaching. It is the most fulfilling thing that I do. But being a teacher and a researcher at the same time is like leading a double life (and that’s not even factoring my family life!). The two (teaching and researching) are both academic enterprises, but they often feel so disconnected — especially when I’m teaching Western Civ. (“Circa A.D. 843 to Circa 1715″) and doing research on the Deuteronomistic History, as I’m doing at the moment. How do I find time to immerse myself fully into two completely divergent topics in the span of a ten week quarter? I can’t. So, I come up with a compromise — such is the academic life.

Next year, this fellowship means that I won’t have to compromise on the time I devote to my research, and also that I can complete my Ph.D. earlier and, thus, find a teaching post somewhere sooner. One former UCLA Ph.D. student told me recently that receiving the GRM grant made him feel like he had a two year head start on his dissertation. That’s what I’m hoping for. Also, though, I have a couple language exams yet to take and then my comprehensive exams will be coming by the end of next year. I hope to have all of my exams completed before the 2011-2012 academic year (my fourth year at UCLA) begins. The GRM gives me the space to run with that task.

As my fellow Bruin, Kevin Scull, explains (see this post too), funding for our program is a bit of a buried treasure that you need to seek out. Nobody in my program is offered a guaranteed “funding package.” Hopefully, we can be an encouragement to other Ph.D. students out there to seek out that funding!

I often wonder why it is that I am so drawn to apocalyptic thought in my research, not to mention why people seem to be paying more and more attention to the topic generally speaking (e.g., see this upcoming conference). What I consider my “bad romance” with apocalyptic  thought began in the summer of 2006 in a course on early Judaism taught by James VanderKam. I simply read 1 Enoch and it was like the intellectual engines turned on. But today, I read an article in the Washington Post (HT: James McGrath), that gave me some broader context for why my brain might be so drawn to this mysterious line of research.

In that article, Hank Stuever interprets the run of ABC’s epic and mysterious “Lost” as an indicator of our collective identity for the past decade. Steuver notes, “It was the perfect show for our frustrated ’00s era, in which no one had to answer for anything much — not for the real estate and Wall Street busts, the levee floods, the bad war intelligence.” Widening the net further, he assesses: “At its most essential, the show was about an airplane crash, told from every possible angle. That’s also our story — wounded by the events of 9/11 and the controlled chaos that came with new battlefields and the worst economy in 70 years.” And still further defining our decade with “Lost”: “We’ll go on living in the future; the people of ‘Lost’ will forever belong to the 2000s, which some are already calling ‘the lost decade.’”

I don’t know who these people are that call the 2000s “the lost decade” — when I googled it, I got some things about Japan and investments — but the idea strikes a chord with me nevertheless, even if for not all the same reasons it does with Steuver. Going back even earlier than 9/11, our culture’s understanding of the decade began with bewildering anticipation about whether the first moment of 2000 would bring about the end of the world. The fanaticism that surrounded Y2K served as one of the cultural backdrops of my first year and a half in college.

Still, I didn’t realize my intellectual calling (as an academic) until my senior year of college, which was indeed the year of 9/11 and the subsequent upheaval of global politics. Academically, I struggled to find a truly satisfying research area. Meanwhile, as our 2000s culture began to explore–for whatever reason–television shows and movies of apocalyptic import, my brain got sucked into it all. Replacing my teenage obsession with Friends (perhaps my deepest connection with ’90s culture), my imagination was drawn towards shows like Lost, Heroes, Jericho, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and now V and FlashForward. “Lost” began the year before I entered seminary.

Without a doubt, I appreciate working with concrete social issues, such as gender roles or economic stratification, in my research. But in the deepest core of my intellectual passions, my ultimate academic search is for complex, hidden mysteries. There is something I love about living with more questions than answers. Is that “Lost’s” effect on me or my attraction to “Lost” or both?

In any case, when people are all concerned about whether we will be “satisfied” with finale, I have a difficult time relating. For me, “Lost” was an apocalypse — an invitation to a world of hidden mysteries. But to be honest, just as I found my attraction to apocalyptic literature by entering the world 1 Enoch, I am more satisfied simply entering the mystery than I am with any attempt at explaining the mystery. For me, the “Lost” finale need not connect all the dots. Rather, I will simply mourn the loss of my biggest cultural partner in my research. Thankfully, I don’t think our culture is done with hidden mysteries.

As a member of the Student Advisory Group, I am currently putting together a panel discussion for this fall’s annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature. The panel is aimed at both master’s and doctoral students who are a bit desperate and frustrated to find their own niche in biblical studies. The panel will include a star-studded cast of established scholars, which isn’t completely in its final form yet. The panelists will share in an autobiographical way about their own struggles to find that initial starting point in scholarship.

The idea is that many graduate students, myself included, often start off loving biblical studies or some related field in general. At some point, however, we hit a wall where we have to settle into one little area of research — at least for the first chunk of our scholarly careers. Frustration ensues. Given that we’re doing biblical studies and it’s really hard to say something that nobody’s said before, we may have more headaches than other fields. And then, add the fact that our field is fraught with passionate religious perspectives from all sorts of directions. What’s a budding scholar to do?

I’d like to ask what you think an appropriate title for this session might be. I’m tentatively calling it, “Finding Your Niche in Biblical Studies.” It’s descriptive enough, I think, but there could easily be a better title. Here are some random ideas:

• Finding Your Niche in Biblical Studies
• Frustrations in Becoming a Biblical Scholar
• How to Begin in Biblical Studies
• Finding the Starting Gate for Your Scholarship [sounds like an infomercial]
• Starting the Scholarly Path
• So, I Like Biblical Studies. Now What?

If you were flipping through the SBL program, what title would most grab your attention and interest? Not necessarily among these possibilities, which I just threw together, but anything you can think of. Thanks!

A shared office. But this shared office, apart from being my first official “office” at any institution, has special meaning. After Prof. Bartchy’s office, this office is the second room that I visited on UCLA’s campus. As a prospective Ph.D. student, I awkwardly stumbled on campus to meet one of Bartchy’s grad students in person, a person with whom I had interacted online a bit. I peeked my head in the door to find Kevin Scull sitting at his desk–probably doing some grading.

I remember being a little nervous to meet Kevin, if only because I thought he might have Bartchy’s ear. Being nervous to meet a warm and jocular guy like Kevin seems humorous as I think about it now. I came and visited with him a few more times after that, meeting in that shared office, conversing with some other TAs.

It did feel a little special to walk into that office this morning, not nervous this time, but rather empowered to think that I’ve gotten that far. When I claimed my desk, I noticed that Kevin still had some of his items posted to the board above the desk next to mine (including an envelope that says “Kevin Scull Lives Here”). A nice little reminder of the distance from then to now.

The journey continues . . .

(By the way, Kevin, I have those things you left behind from two years ago )

SBL Career Center has been posting positions for 2010 and I thought I’d take a peek at the spots that are out there. I’m not applying for these spots as I’m not on the market yet, but it’s never too early to investigate the lay of the land. I noticed a common requirement. Historical-critical scholars who have no interest in “ideological” criticisms will be at a disadvantage!

Seattle University: Assistant Professor of New Testament & Christian Origins (Ph.D. Required; tenure track): “We are particularly interested in applicants with expertise in liberation, feminist, African-American, Latino/a, Asian, or ecological hermeneutics.”

Xavier University: Assistant Professor of New Testament (Ph.D. required; tenure track). “Candidates should have a facility with diverse interpretive methods and approaches to sacred texts as well as the ability to reflect on and communicate the theological and ethical implications of the early Christian traditions for an engagement with today’s pluralistic world.” Diverse interpretive methods. Today’s pluralistic world.

University of South Carolina: Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Christian Scriptures [Canonical and Extracanonical] (Ph.D. required; tenure track). The description notes the need for strong candidates to have expertise in one of the following: “interdisciplinary approaches to Scripture; knowledge of various interpretive traditions, including postmodern, feminist, multicultural, or global; knowledge of popular/emerging cultures of the Mediterranean; or material culture.”

Kalamazoo College: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Christian (New) Testament (Ph.D. required; M.Div. desirable [!]; tenure track). “In addition to expertise in the textual traditions, candidates should be able to teach courses reflecting knowledge of the cultural contexts, interpretations and impact of those texts in Christian and Jewish communities.” Cultural contexts. Interpretations. Impact.

Pacific Lutheran University: Assistant Professor of New Testament (Ph.D. required; tenure track). “The Department seeks a candidate with a primary concentration in biblical hermeneutics, with special emphasis on biblical interpretation in a multi-faith context. Additional competencies expected in 1) Hebrew Bible or Greco-Roman religions and 2) critical methods.” Not quite the same emphasis as the others, but there is a need to be familiar with interpretation and not simply historical-critical research.

So, if you’re a young scholar focusing on historical-critical work, and nothing else, this seems to be a wake up call to think about diverse issues of interpretation in today’s world.

I have taught in a few different capacities. Several of those have been ministry-related–small groups, sermons, Sunday school, etc. My first teaching assistant position was for Greek as an undergrad, where I often helped go through homework with students in class. In that position, in TA spots I had at Fuller Seminary and as a reader at UCLA, I occassionally helped students outside of class. At Fuller, I did take over a few classes for the Greek course I TA’d when the instructor had a baby. This fall, however, I will be responsible not just for grading or sporadic tutoring, but for guiding my own section of a class, week by week, through an entire quarter. I wasn’t expecting to get a TAship at UCLA because they are competitive to begin with and the California budget is somewhere in the ninth circle of hell.

Being an educator is the biggest reason I got into this business of academia, even if the research side of things does energize me as well. So, I am very excited to start getting my feet wet with a real classroom. The bad news is that I don’t know yet what I’ll be teaching. I will be assigned to one of the larger survey courses in the history department, perhaps Western Civilization or World History. That means that on a given week, I may know hardly any more than the students themselves. This is one of the challenges of the TA system at UCLA, but also an advantage. Such challenges will stretch me to discover how to teach subjects beyond my expertise, and I hope will give me more confidence to enter my first real job in a couple years.

But one step at a time. Maybe I should start boning up on Western Civ in the meanwhile.

When my wife and I sat down in the middle of the night with a home pregnancy test in bewildered awe of the coming tectonic shift in our lives, I didn’t really consider the situation that I would be in when our little baby entered the world. From our calculations, it looked like he would enter the world around the time of my winter break after my first quarter in the PhD program. We thought that perhaps aiming for the summer break (which will be my first summer break in years!) might be more ideal, but winter break sounded like a good alternative.

His due date was actually slightly before the break began, just before finals week. Hmmm. Looking a bit less academically “convenient.” As it turned out, our boy thought he’d wait it out and came two weeks late and during the break. Before you think that this eased my end-of-quarter responsibilities, consider that rather than having a baby to care for, the situation left me with a very pregnant wife to serve (thus fulfilling our marital vows) just as the quarter was coming to a close. Some academic responsibilities were necessarily put on hold.

When Declan (our son) finally did come (after some encouragement), however, I was not “in the clear” with my academic responsibilities. I had grading to do. And lots of it. I had been used to Fuller Seminary’s policy of allowing professors until the second week of the following quarter–no matter how long the break is–to complete and submit grades. As a student, I didn’t like the wait. As a grader, I appreciated the breathing room. Now, at UCLA, my appreciation for Fuller’s policy is even deeper. You see, at UCLA, no matter how many students are on your class–thirty or three hundred–you have about one week to grade your assignments. I was the grader for a class of 120 students and my son was born on the one week I had to grade. The situation left me with final exams to grade, whilst on the maternity floor.

Such was my introduction to life as an academic dad.

Since I have intended this blog to explore the strange world of academia, I thought I might start blogging about my own transition into this world. I have seen some articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the past on similar themes. I will have to revisit them and see how true they have become for me. When I call this series of posts “acadadia” I do not seek to diminish academic moms, who face their own series of challenges. My own wife is very accomplished professionally, with more letters after her name than I have (at least so far–our competition isn’t over yet), and has plenty of challenges as she considers what it will mean for her to have a strong career and also be a dedicated mom. I would simply like to explore what it means for me to be a devoted father (and husband!) while also tackling my academic goals.

So many people have warned me about the challenges of a doctoral program. And now I am learning them first hand.

More to come.

It hasn’t quite become official–I have to pass my classes after all –but I have handed in my last assignment for Fuller Theological Seminary. I have now finished all the work necessary to earn my Master of Divinity. I am so excited to start bossing around divine beings. I believe my first command will be a major windfall via the lottery. Then perhaps I will demand the peaceful end to violent conflict in the world. Let’s see how this goes.

This means that I am no longer a “seminarian.” I don’t have much time to relax and simply be for awhile. I begin my courses at UCLA on Thursday, when I will commence my career as a “doctoral student.” I actually began taking my Latin course at Pasadena City College already, so I have overlapped my courses to make sure that I would not give myself any break whatsoever. I shouldn’t complain, though. This is the academic life. Even without much mental rest, I am excited to finally dive deeper into my passions through doctoral work this fall.

Farewell, my dear Fuller! Until we meet again . . . which will be soon, because I will keep using your library . . . and at some point maybe you’ll let me adjunct?

Many may know about the discussion raised by Hector Avalos about the “end of biblical studies.” For those who don’t, I will catch you up a little bit. The issue is about whether we should teach biblical studies as an academic discipline and, if so, how we should go about it. The issue obviously hits close to home for me, since I’ll be looking for a job teaching biblical studies as an academic discipline in a few years.

Hector Avalos is a trained biblical scholar (receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991), now teaching as a professor at Iowa State University, who has become somewhat (in)famous for criticizing his own field. The book that has pushed this discussion forward is his The End of Biblical Studies, which I have to admit I have not yet read. As I understand it (and I may not), Avalos suggests that the Bible is irrelevant to contemporary culture. For Avalos, the guild of biblical scholars falsely maintains the illusion that the Bible is relevant in the interests of academic preservation. In short, we only say the Bible is relevant because we don’t want to lose our jobs.

Now, there are plenty of things that academia studies, writes about, and teaches that are not exactly thought of as relevant in contemporary culture. I believe Avalos’ major bone with biblical studies is that our study of Christian origins should not be confined to a religiously defined canon of texts. Why not also teach the Gnostic literature alongside the New Testament?

More recently, Helmut Koester (longtime professor of New Testament at the aforementioned Harvard) wrote a critique of Avalos in the September/October 2008 issue of Biblical Archeology Review (pages 11-12), the periodical of a society criticized in Avalos’ book. Koester (not surprisingly) defends the relevance of biblical studies, concluding, “The relationship of American religious life, Bible and scholarship is a vital and undeniable factor in our society—especially in the United States—however, controversial.” Avalos responds to Koester on the Debunking Christianity blog in a post entitled “Prof. Helmut Koester: A Reality Check for Him.” Avalos accuses Koester of being “short on facts and long on routine religionist apologetics for biblical studies.” Responding to this discussion, you can find an excellent treatment done by April DeConick, who attempts a kind of middle ground between Avalos and Koester.

I would like to zero in on one particular point: the relevance of the Bible to contemporary culture. Avalos suggests that people don’t actually read the Bible much and, hence, the Bible is irrelevant. On the blog post mentioned, he cites studies showing “that 21.9% of Mainline Protestants and 33.1% of Catholics ‘never’ read Scripture” and that “even those who read scripture more than ‘never,’ don’t read or apply much of it.” He says:

In fact, most Christians probably use a miniscule amount of the Bible in their lives because they do not find most of it relevant. This is not just my judgment, but that of many conservative evangelical scholars and sociologists.

[ . . . ]

1) The Bible has already lost much of its influence in American religion;

2) Any influence still left is partly the result of an ecclesial-academic complex, of which Dr. Koester is himself a part, which keeps promoting the illusion that the Bible is important. Without the constant effluence of “new translations,” among other marketing devices, the Bible would probably die.

First, I would like to ask, do people actually have to read the Bible for it to be a relevant field for academic discipline? How many people actually read the U.S. Constitution? Clearly, the Constitution is relevant. Does the mere fact that the Bible is a religious document while the Constitution is a secular legal document make the former irrelevant and the latter relevant? The Constitution is the foundation for our society’s legal system and must be constantly studied. The Bible (particularly the religiously defined “canon”) is the foundational “document” for the largest religious group in American society (people who call themselves “Christians”). Shouldn’t the fact that the Bible is little read but highly revered warrant academic investigation and education?

I can understand Avalos’ concern about jobs in academia and the “religionist” bias stronghold on biblical research. On the other hand, why do people even pursue this career if our job options are so bleak? Isn’t it because so many of us were so affected by people’s readings of the Bible (one way or another) that we became passionate about studying and teaching biblical studies? I know that’s my story. It’s the story of most every grad student I know in the field of biblical studies.

April hits the nail on the head:

Where does this leave me in terms of my thoughts on the subject? I understand Koester’s position on the reality of American religiosity and what this means for those of us who study and teach early Christianity. I understand Avalos’ position to rid the historical study of early Judaism and Christianity from its canonical limitations (including the name “Biblical Studies”), because these limitations support religious and theological interests. I personally have negotiated this front by breaking canonical boundaries in my own scholarship, creating sections at SBL which cross canonical boundaries, and teaching beyond these boundaries. But this doesn’t mean to me that the biblical texts aren’t essential to early Judaism and Christianity. In fact, their importance reverberates for centuries and centuries, and yes, they are still with us. In my opinion, teaching the bible is more important than ever in America. . . .

Amen. I may indeed be teaching at a school with a confessional stance in the future. But my hope is to help students with confessional understandings of the Bible to be awakened to the nuanced issues of history and interpretation. I hope to do my little part in aiding students with high views of the Bible to understand and apply that collection of texts in a more responsible manner.

If I needed any confirmation that New Testament and Christian origins are “my thing,” here it is. My current quarter contains no such classes and I’m feeling the energy drain. I feel like the extrovert without her crowd or the introvert without his quiet place. A few other factors may be playing a role. For example, I’m at the end of a three year program with the knowledge that a new program will be starting in the fall. Perhaps I have a little bit of senioritis. The remaining few months of my Fuller Seminary degree are at risk of being a “lame duck” moment.

And yet, out of mist of my final seminary moments rises a great opportunity. My future adviser, Scott Bartchy, has invited me to come to a lecture of and a dinner with the legendary New Testament scholar, Robert Jewett (here is his vita). Dr. Jewett is visiting UCLA to give a lecture in Bartchy’s Paul seminar, after which Bartchy, Jewett, the four others in my program and I will be sharing dinner. Jewett most recently published his massive commentary on Romans for the Hermeneia series, but he’s also authored some other interesting books, including Captain America and the Crusade against Evil:The Dilemma Of Zealous Nationalism (with John Shelton Lawrence, a frequent writing partner) and the Saint Paul at the Movies series. I’m always hooked with a New Testament scholar talks about “civil religion.” They know what makes this Anabaptist heart beat faster.

With this opportunity, I have had a boost back into more exciting studies for me. It also comes as a realization that, yes, I’m on the right path. If New Testament and Christian origins gets me revved up, then I should probably stick to it!