2021 MF CASR Annual Lecture with Annette Yoshiko Reed

Archival Amnesia: The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Biblical Canon, and the Forgotten Jewish Past

Archives and anthologies are commonly viewed as technologies of preservation, protecting the memory of the past from the dangers of forgetting--and perhaps nowhere more so than with scriptures. Drawing upon theoretical and historiographical insights on the archive, this lecture looks instead to what is forgotten and relegated to forgetting in the process of archivalization. To do so, it looks especially to what the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed about the power of biblical canons in shaping and constraining the memory of the biblical past. What might we see, instead, when we focus on their amnesia-inducing effects, as engines and fulcrums of forgetting? And what might we recover, in the process, about the cultural power of forgetting?

Dr. Blossom Stefaniw, Professor of the Intellectual History of Christianity, will comment on Annette Reed's lecture.

This lecture will be online.