Me at SBL

Since most of my blogging brethren have mentioned when and where they'll be presenting, I thought I might as well mention what I'll be doing in order to contribute to the collective stroking of personal egos. This year will be really fun, as I've been invited on to a panel- I didn't even have to submit a proposal!!

Truth be told, I'm kind of nervous about this. I only had 3 semesters of Hebrew under my belt before I began teaching intro Hebrew, so I'm not that far ahead of the students. (Guess what- I think that's what makes me a decent teacher of intro languages!). But sitting in a room full of members of the NAPH is pretty intimidating- I'm quite positive I will be the one with the weakest Hebrew skills in the room. But no matter, I look forward to it, and if anyone asks me a question I don't know the answer to, I will simply answer the question with a question!

See you all there!

National Association of Professors of Hebrew/Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Joint Session With: National Association of Professors of Hebrew, Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
11/21/2010
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room TBD - Hotel TBD

Theme: New Biblical Hebrew Grammars

Pamela Scalise, Fuller Theological Seminary, Presiding (5 min)
Brian L. Webster, Dallas Theological Seminary
The Cambridge Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (20 min)
H. Daniel Zacharias, Acadia Divinity College
NAPH: Hebrew Grammars (20 min)
Discussion (10 min)
Jo Ann Hackett, University of Texas at Austin
Celebrating "A Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew" (20 min)
Martien Halvorson-Taylor, University of Virginia
NAPH: Hebrew Grammars (Hackett, A Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew) (20 min)
Vivian L. Johnson, United Theological Seminary
NAPH: Hebrew Grammars Panel (20 min)
Theodore Hiebert, McCormick Theological Seminary
NAPH: Hebrew Grammars (20 min)
Discussion (10 min)

Dear SBL and Hendrickson- colons are stupid

In the midst of my dissertation writing I have to be diligent about proper formatting. I happen to be a bit of an expert when it comes to bibliography managers too, which I use to manage my footnotes and bibliography.

One thing that really annoys me about the SBL style is its use of the colon in footnotes directly before the cited page only for journal articles and book reviews! Every other type (books, essays, etc) use a comma before the cited page. So why? Who knows, but it is really annoying.

Worse than that, and the reason it should be changed, is that the lack of uniformity introduces difficulty for bibliographic software to do its job. Bib. software wants a uniform way to work with cited pages.

So, if SBL ever decides to do a new edition of the SBL Handbook, please kill the colon! (and follow the advice for electronic editions of books I've given too)

A bloated SBL?

April DeConick has just made an interesting post which I agree with very much— that there are too many sessions at the SBL annual meeting and needs to be reorganized.

This makes me think of Mark Goodacre's "tips for surviving SBL". One part has always bothered me a little bit- his suggestion that it is okay to be a flake and walk in and out of sessions. While on one level I agree with him- go see the papers you want to see!- it has gotten to be a crazy stampede after every paper. I've seen presenters leave their own session once they were done too. I think fewer sessions, or fewer meetings of sessions, and perhaps different planning, would reduce traffic a little.

Anyway, go and read DeConick's post, it's a good one.