Book of Job | Centre for the study of bible, culture and modernity

The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Hermeneutics

Conference "The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Hermeneutics". Princeton University, October 14-15, 2012.

The Book of Job has held a central role in defining the project of modernity from the age of Enlightenment until today. What makes the Book of Job such a prominent text in modern art, film, literature, music, theater, and thought? Why has Job's response to disaster become a touchstone for modern reflections on catastrophic events? What kind of answer (if at all) can the Voice from the Whirlwind offer in a post-theological age? How is Job's social critique translated by modern and postmodern thinkers and artists to address ethical and political concerns? What are the interrelations between traditional conceptions of Job as parable and modern Joban parables? In what ways does Job's aesthetic legacy serve as a key to defining the cry of modern witnesses? In what ways do the various artistic media differ from each other in probing religious questions and what kind of exchanges and collaborations can be discerned among them? To what extent can aesthetic inquiries within religious realms change our perception of religious texts and religious experience? And vice versa, to what extent can religion allow or compel us to open up the concept of the "aesthetic"?

Program

Sunday, October 14, 2012

10:00-10:15 Greetings and Opening Remarks
10:15-12:15 Readings of Select Passages in Job in Hebrew and English
Study Groups – Job 1-3 and Job 40-41
Respondent: Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary
13:30-15:30 Early Jobs
Chair: Martha Himmelfarb, Princeton University
- Napthtali Meshel, Princeton University
  Whose Job is This?
- Moulie Vidas, Princeton University
  The Mesopotamian Debate on Job and the Uncommon Rabbinic Scripture
16:00-18:00 Wandering Jobs and the Question of Modernity
Chair: Lital Levy, Princeton University
- Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp
  Kafka’s Job
- Galit Hasan-Rokem, Hebrew University
  Joseph Roth’s Joban Transformations of the Wandering Jew - Legend and Myth in Hiob and Der Leviathan
19:30-21:00 Keynote Lecture
Chair: Peter Schäfer, Princeton University
- Robert Alter, UC Berkley
  Rewriting Job in the Poetry of Natan Zach

Monday, October 15

10:00-12:00 Job from Kabbalah to Enlightenment
Chair: Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
- Yaacob Dweck, Princeton University
  Jacob Sasportas and the Book of Job
- Jonathan Sheehan, UC Berkeley
  Job, Enlightenment, and the Disorder of Things
13:00-15:00 Aesthetic and Anti-Aesthetic Shifts
Chair: Esther Schor, Princeton University
- Ilana Pardes, Hebrew University
  Melville’s Wall-Street Job: Biblical Aesthetics
- Ruth HaCohen, Hebrew University
  Night, Noise and the Anguishing Other: From Moses Mendelssohn to Mahler and Schoenberg
15:30-17:30 The Question of Suffering
Chair: Leong Seow, Princeton Theological Seminary
- Freddie Rokem, Tel Aviv University
  The Dramaturgy of Humiliation and Suffering Hanoch Levin’s Play The Torments (Passion) of Job
- Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University
  Joban Themes in Philip Roth’s Nemesis
19:30-21:30 Film: A Serious Man
Chair: Judith Weisenfeld, Princeton University

Conference Poster

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