The Review: What Do Chronicle Reporters Do?; The Universal Old Testament

Talk with our journalists about their reportage on higher ed. ADVERTISEMENT [Academe Today Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. When did the Hebrew Bible become “literature” rather than Scripture? That’s the question asked in Yael Almog’s book Secularism and Hermeneutics (Penn, 2019), one of the most stimulating scholarly monographs I’ve read recently. Almog focuses on how the thinkers of the German Enlightenment — especially Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Michaelis, and Moses Mendelssohn — helped transform the Old Testament into a work of universally resonant world literature, in the process establishing interpretive norms for literary reading as such. Secularism and Hermeneutics is a history not just of biblical reception, but of the development of literary theory. That process had trade-offs, namely the consignment of specifically Jewish reading practices to what Tanvi Solanki, in [Syndicate’]( recent forum]( on Almog’s book, called “indecipherable obscurity.” The suppression of religiously and ethnically particularistic interpretation in the name of universality was the bargain by which the Hebrew Bible could become poetry. This was the sort of loss to which the thinkers of the period were accustomed. As Ilit Ferber puts it, “a fundamental premise of the Enlightenment” is that “rationality and logos exact a price.” In his own contribution to the forum, Chad Wellmon wonders whether the secular hermeneutics launched by Almog’s cast of characters is so secular after all. In fact, he says, the putatively irreligious work of the philologists “blurs the lines between critique and revelation, modern and un-modern, attachment and detachment — between scholarly reading and sacred reading.” (The fuzzy boundaries between scholarly and sacred reading have come up a lot in the Review recently; the topic is touched on both in Simon During’s 2019 article “[Losing Faith in the Humanities]( and [in this conversation]( among Wellmon, Merve Emre, Paul Reitter, and me last month.) Read the [whole]( here](. SPONSOR CONTENT | PALO ALTO NETWORKS [Learn how colleges are delivering cybersecurity solutions to their communities](. Talk With Chronicle Reporters “It is generally overlooked,” Max Weber wrote, “that a journalist’s actual responsibility is far greater than the scholar’s.” Whether or not that’s true, scholarship and journalism share some problem areas: their essential involvement in questions of objectivity, their frequently dissident relationship to political authority, and their imperiled institutional futures. On Monday (if you’re reading this in your inbox, that’s today!) at 4 p.m. Eastern time, [talk with]( — Eric Hoover, Emma Pettit]( and Beckie Supiano]( — about those and other topics. What piques their interest in a story? How does the reporting process unfold? How are terms like “off the record” and “on background” defined? [Sign up here](. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. The Latest THE REVIEW [On (Not) Sleeping With Your Students]( By Len Gutkin [STORY IMAGE]( The philosopher Amia Srinivasan on sex, ethics, consent, and Freud. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW [The Confounding Case of Jan Boxill]( By Andy Thomason [STORY IMAGE]( The Chapel Hill professor was implicated in an infamous scandal. To focus on her culpability is to miss a disturbing truth about higher education in America. THE REVIEW [‘We as Humanists Are Not in a Monopoly’]( By Len Gutkin [STORY IMAGE]( Leon Botstein has been the president of Bard College since 1975. We spoke with him about the challenges he faces today. Recommended: - Like many readers, I’ve discovered a lot of new favorite writers in the NYRB Classics series — most recently, the Romanian-Austrian writer [Gregor von Rezzori]( (1914-98), whose novels and memoirs describe with bitter hilarity the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rise of the Nazis. Those world-historical cataclysms are filtered through the miserable, manic consciousnesses of Rezzori’s fictional alter-egos (sex-crazed, decayed aristocrats with bad jobs, guilt complexes, and PTSD). Rezzori’s is “a writerly talent that united in itself the qualities of Henry Miller with those of Dostoevsky,” as the narrator of his magnum opus, The Death of My Brother Abel, puts it. Googling around, [I turned up this 2006]( York]( article about Re]( widow]( the Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte von Rezzori, who used to run a writers’ retreat in Tuscany. Beneficiaries of her largess included Zadie Smith, Benjamin Kunkel, and Gary Shteyngart, who said of his time with the Baronessa, “I came barely knowing the difference between a horse and a cow. I leave a coffee-making, salad-serving Man of Nature.” - “I have so much to say, but the Cantonese words are just out of reach, my tongue unable to retrieve them after being neglected in favor of English for so long.” At The New Yorker, Jenny Liao on [losing her first language]( and with it her ability to talk with her parents. SPONSOR CONTENT | AIG [Helping Employees Take Control of Student Loan Debt]( Learn how organizations are attracting and retaining a competitive workforce by helping employees improve their financial situation, offering student loan assistance to relive financial anxiety. Write to me at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [Today's Mission Critical Campus Jobs]( Explore how key campus positions are growing in strategic importance compared to how they have traditionally functioned, why they've recently grown more essential, and how they're continuing to evolve. [Order your copy today.]( JOB OPPORTUNITIES Apply for the top jobs in higher education and [search all our open positions](. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK What did you think of today’s newsletter? [Strongly disliked]( | [It was ok]( | [Loved it]( This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. [Manage]( your newsletter preferences, [stop receiving]( this email, or [view]( our privacy policy. © 2021 [The Chronicle of Higher Education]( 1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037