The Graduate Forum
an interdisciplinary forum at New York University
Stephen Russell
Spring 2003 - Fall 2004
Since completing my doctorate in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU, I have been a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing research and teaching in the connections amongst the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Studies, and ancient Near Eastern religions. The focus of my work in these fields is sacred space and my contribution has been the charting of its unobserved political dimensions. My second book, Beyond Sacred Space, advances a spatial paradigm for understanding how the ancient Israelite and Judahite monarchies constructed their legitimacy. Whereas a rich tradition of scholarship focuses on the social basis of monarchic power in the biblical period, I argue that a spatial perspective allows a richer understanding of the heterogeneous, hidden, complex, and even contradictory forces that shaped the legitimacy of the monarchies in Iron Age Israel and Judah. Observations on the connections between the political and the spatial were nascent in my first book. Revised from my doctoral dissertation, Images of Egypt in Early Biblical Literature proposes a regional model for understanding the origins of the exodus story, one of the Bible’s primary explanations of how the tribal coalition Israel came into existence.
The graduate forum was extremely influential in opening up for me the possibility of interdisciplinary conversations, a legacy evident in my current work. Whereas most biblical scholars focus on the archaeological and textual evidence form the ancient world, I read that evidence in dialogue with work in other fields. For example, Beyond Sacred Space takes up the work of the sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre's work on the social production of space allows me to interrogate biblical evidence in fresh ways. In turn, I contribute to wider debates. The book uncovers the political nature of sacred space and supplements the theory of power with spatial insights, contributions that have implications beyond Biblical Studies.