The annual Society of Biblical Literature conference will be held next month in San Diego, in combination with the American Academy of Religion or AAR. ( The American School of Oriental Research or ASOR used to hold theirs concurrently as well.) SBL is probably the largest conference of its kind, lasting several days, with several thousand people in attendance. The best parts are the socializing and networking, and the Bookanalia, in which hundreds of academic book and software publishers set up booths and offer their wares at serious discount. I guess there are lectures to attend, too.
Numerous LDS presenters are on the list, a paper copy of which is sent to all registered to attend. Some are students or recently graduated, some participate in the bloggernaccle, and some are on faculty at BYU.
There is also a relatively new section, the “LDS and the Bible Consultation” (S19-72), which appears to have mostly LDS presenters, exceptions being Margaret Barker and Alden Thompson.
In short, it should be a good interesting conference.
Which among you will be in attendance? Roll call.
My wife (Duke Ph.D. candidate in Early Christianity) and I will be there. We look forward to seeing folks at the BYU reception.
I will prolly be there.
I will not be there, so cancel your tickets.
I would love love love to come but I doubt that it will be possible.
I have always wanted to go. But it is always in November, and there’s simply no way I can get away from work that late in the year. Bummer.
I hope folks will blog about the experience so we can get a little vicarious thrill from it.
Does anyone know more about Alden Thompson’s interest in the subject?
Not this year, though I plan to in future years….
I’m not coming, sadly. Since I dropped out of the PhD in Hebrew, I haven’t given much attention to the Bible.
Good lord, not Margaret Barker…
I was one of those promising undergrads (I hope), and we had a great time. Another student and I had submitted papers to the regional SBL in Denver next March and we were waiting eagerly to hear back from a professor friend of ours who was part of the committee that decided there in San Diego who would be accepted to present. Not only were both our papers accepted over several dozem professional papers, but one of our papers won the best undergraduate paper award. The committee decided it was better than all the graduate papers and most of the professional papers, so they didn’t even hand out a graduate paper award.
If you can’t make it to Denver next March, however, both papers will be presented on Friday, December 7th on the BYU campus as part of the Students of the Ancient Near East Symposium on Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Literature. If anyone would like more information can see an invitation with the full schedule here:http://kennedy.byu.edu/academic/ANES/SANEconf07.pdf
It appears I can’t edit these posts once I’ve made them, and the previous post is a grammatical train wreck. Please forgive me.