Call For Papers 2023

December

Remembering Jerusalem: The Materiality of Memory in the Second Temple Period

Call for Papers Deadline: December 16 2025.
Conference Date: Tuesday March 11 2025.
Location: ONLINE
E-mail Submission: joan.taylor@kcl.ac.uk,

We are pleased to announce the next KCL-UCL Workshop in Biblical Studies & Call for Short Papers: ‘Remembering Jerusalem: The Materiality of Memory in the Second Temple Period’.

This online workshop, on Tuesday March 11 2025, will reflect on how memory is shaped by material remains, and how material remains function in memorialisation. Given the significance of place in biblical texts, how did the physical past (tombs, walls, gates, buildings, etc) feature in remembering former events and people in Judah? How were these material remains restored, moved, named or reinterpreted? How was ‘antiquity’ and ‘heritage’ either celebrated, absorbed, ignored, modified or destroyed, as shown by both texts and archaeology (including coins and epigraphy)? How did physical remains interact with concepts of space and place in the city’s development? With our focus on the period that has given us the finalised books of the Hebrew Bible, the pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus, we will explore how ancient material remains became sites of memory and how these remains functioned in evolving activities and ideologies.

Date: Tuesday March 11 2025.
This will be an ONLINE event, running from 10 am to 5 pm UK Time, 6 am to 1 pm Eastern Standard Time (USA), 9 pm to 4 am Australian Eastern Daylight time, 12 noon to 7 pm Jerusalem time. Historians, biblical scholars and archaeologists (including PhD students) are welcome to join in discussing this important topic with online talks and discussion. Apart from headline talks, papers will be 20 mins with 10 minutes for discussion. Proposals within the above area, together with a brief abstract, should be sent to Prof. Joan Taylor, joan.taylor@kcl.ac.uk, by December 16 2025.
Convenors: Joan Taylor and Paul Joyce (KCL); Mark Geller and Sacha Stern (UCL).
Confirmed headline speakers: Morning: Boaz Zissu, ‘Herod’s Family Tomb’ in Jerusalem Revisited;
Afternoon: Shimon Gibson, Zion Remembered and Rebuilt: The Fortification of the Western Hill of Jerusalem in the Achaemenid and Hellenistic Periods.