Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies
Rhiannon Graybill (co-winner)
Text after Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press)
From the jury:
Texts After Terror has rightly been described as "really interesting," "daring and devastating," as well as a "critical" and "authentic" engagement with "many of the Bible's most disturbing narratives." This is not the first time that sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible or the various religious structures that have upheld Patriarchy are critiqued. Graybill shows a mastery in bringing a sense of concreteness and materiality to what she at first describes as the "fuzzy messy, and icky" nature of sextual violence. In her second chapter, for example, she speaks of "the edges of consent" which she makes sure is understood not as "a margin" but rather "the brink" with the uncertainty and ambivalence that it can suggest. Later in the same chapter, she gets our attention to the sticky nature of "affect" as an ability to be passed back and forth repeatedly. From there she takes us straight to the stickiness of affect in all the three rape stories that she will consider in the same chapter. At the same time, Graybill displays remarkable loyalty to the promise that she has made in the early pages of her book that "more than terror" she will remain interested in the question of the "after." What comes after sexual violence? In the rape cases in chapter 2, she remains focused on the stickiness of the "after." The victim of sextual violence is understood to be "contaminated" to the point that she is a "threat" of bringing the sticky contamination into the community. It is good to highlight the fact that, as Valerie Bridgman observes, "while Texts After Terror works with current theory, it remains a good, not clunky, read."
Gloria Maité Hernández (co-winner)
Savoring God: Comparative Theopoetics (Oxford University Press)
From the jury:
Besides being a meticulous, in-depth, and sincere labour of love, Savoring God bridges time, linguistic difference (Spanish and Sanskrit), religious orientations (Catholicism and Hinduism), as well as mystical personalities and temperaments (John of the Cross and the Rasa Lila). While comparativists are often tempted to stick to the broader outline, lest the comparison collapses, the success of Savoring God is the focus of its comparative theopoetics on the finest details in the texts. Each of the examples have their own gift. In "Seeing God through the fountain," for example, the "silver features" of the "crystalline fountain" suddenly form "the desired eyes" that in Cantico John has drawn in his "most inside." (95) Just as we are enjoying this amazing sensory moment bridging the inner and the outer, Hernandez reminds us that "while poetically the fountain" seems to be an ally of the observer, "theological commentaries see it a "mediator and an obstacle for the soul to attain the direct vision of God." As Niki Clement points out, these "gorgeous, direct, and meticulous textual" readings teach us how to read with our affect as well as intellect. As a result, one of the book's major achievements is its ability to keep the transformative nature of reading in the foreground.