Faculty
Robert S. Kawashima
Assistant Professor
Ph.D.
Hebrew Bible, Comparative Literature, Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Office: 120 Anderson Hall
Phone: (352) 273-2930
Email:
rsk@ufl.edu
Robert Kawashima holds a joint appointment in the Department of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the faculty of the University of Florida, he was a Faculty Fellow at UC Berkeley and a Dorot Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.
His work is broadly comparative, focusing on the Hebrew Bible in relation to both the ancient Mediterranean world and the literary and intellectual history of the West; other research interests include literary theory, linguistics, epic, and the novel. He has written on various aspects of the Hebrew Bible — linguistic, literary, legal — as well as on Homer and literary theory. His first book, Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode, was a finalist for the Koret Jewish Book Award, under the category: Autobiography, Biography and Literary Studies. He is co-editor, with Gilles Philippe and Thelma Sowley, of a recently published festschrift: Phantom Sentences: Essays in Linguistics and Literature Presented to Ann Banfield. His current book project, The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge, is an analysis of Israel’s religious traditions informed by Foucault’s investigations into the history of systems of thought.
Publications
Books:
- Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode (Indiana University Press, 2004)
-
Phantom Sentences: Essays in Linguistics and Literature Presented to Ann Banfield, co-edited with Gilles Philippe and Thelma Sowley (Peter Lang, 2008)
- “Sources and Redaction,” in Reading Genesis: Methods and Interpretations, ed. Ronald Hendel (Cambridge University Press), forthcoming
- “‘Orphaned’ Converted Tense Forms in Classical Biblical Hebrew Prose,” Journal of Semitic Studies, forthcoming
- “The Syntax of Narrative Forms,” in Literary-Linguistic Approaches to Narrative: the Ancient Near East (including Egypt), and Neighbouring Regions (Peeters), forthcoming
- “What is Narrative Perspective? A Non-historicist Answer,” in Phantom Sentences: Essays in Linguistics and Literature Presented to Ann Banfield, 105-126
- “Comparative Literature and Biblical Studies: The Case of Allusion,” Prooftexts 27 (2007): 324–344
- “The Priestly Tent of Meeting and the Problem of Divine Transcendence: An ‘Archaeology’ of the Sacred,” Journal of Religion 86 (2006): 226-57
- “A Revisionist Reading Revisited: On the Creation of Adam and then Eve,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006): 46-57
- “Homo Faber in J’s Primeval History,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116 (2004): 483-501
- “Verbal Medium and Narrative Art in Homer and the Bible,” Philosophy and Literature 28 (2004): 103-17
- “The Jubilee Year and the Return of Cosmic Purity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 65 (2003): 370-89
- “The Jubilee, Every 49 or 50 Years?” Vetus Testamentum 53 (2003): 117-20
- “From Song to Story: The Genesis of Narrative in Judges 4 and 5,” Prooftexts 21 (2001): 151-78
