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The BRANE Collective: Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective
The BRANE Collective: Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective
An inclusive, open-access research group for the study of biblical and
ancient Near Eastern literatures and their cultural worlds in the 21st
century
The BRANE Collective is intended to be a
decentralized, collaborative, and free context for sharing scholarly
work, resources, and support. Any scholar who agrees to abide by the
four principles below is welcome to be part of the Collective and launch
their own initiatives.
1. Inclusivity: Our first principle is inclusion of
all scholars interested in advancing the study of biblical and ancient
Near Eastern literatures and their cultural worlds from the invention of
writing through late antiquity regardless of their ethnicity/race,
gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and economic status. This is first for
basic moral and human reasons, but also intellectual ones. We hold that
understanding the whole of ancient human thought and experience requires
active intellectual engagement with the whole of human ways of being.
This means the encouragement of scholarly modes attuned to these ways of
being, such as the study of gender and sexuality, disability,
ethnicity/race, and economic and political power and change. Equally, it
means affirmatively welcoming scholars of all backgrounds.
2. Rigor: we are dedicated to promoting scholarly
discovery by philologically and theoretically rigorous means. We exist
to discuss and share ideas that ask new questions and advance on old
problems via clear, step-by-step arguments and use of publicly available
and openly shared evidence. Contributions should aim to be
comprehensible by and persuasive to their audience regardless of
metaphysical presuppositions or religious commitments. We promote
“philology” in the broad sense, encompassing textual disciplines from
epigraphy to literary theory, and in dialogue with scholarship that goes
beyond words, such as archaeology and art history.
3. Public service and open access: a central goal of
any 21st-century democratic scholarly society should be to bridge gaps
between specialized scholarship and the broader interested public, but
also gaps between those with access to travel time and funding and
specialized library resources, and those without. Therefore all
presentations and meetings should make their main arguments publicly
accessible in open-access forms that explain why the work matters. At
the same time it is important to allow scholars to share tentative works
in progress. So presentation formats can vary as appropriate with these
ideals in mind. At one end, works in progress can be framed as pitches,
with more detail than an abstract but not as much as a working paper
(including the ability to only disclose enough of the conclusion or
method to generate interest or show promise). At a maximum, the format
can provide a full medium of peer reviewed publication that includes a
built in forum for constructive discussion.
4. Advancement of scholarship and scholars: finally,
an equally central goal is to proactively advance new voices. This
means setting aside major fora for new and early career scholars, as
well as scholars with less access to institutional resources. An
important role for senior scholars and scholars at elite institutions
will be to actively work to develop these scholars’ projects by acting
as discussants and commenters, and keynote pieces will equally represent
the work of new and less-heard voices as well as advanced work from
established scholars.
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