Sunday, November 21, 2010

SBL Atlanta 2010, Sunday, #SBL10

After the pretty exhausting day yesterday, today was much more relaxing and enjoyable. I went to the University of Birmingham breakfast first thing. This has become a bit of a highlight since leaving Birmingham over five years ago, and a nice way of keeping in touch with old friends and colleagues. I ate some rather odd sausages, chicken apple flavour I think they were.

I did the SBL tart thing this morning, flitting between several different sessions of interest. I particularly enjoyed Richard Wright's paper on 1 Cor. 11.2-16 in the Ritual and Gender section. I also enjoyed catching a couple of papers in the Intertextuality section, including Dukie Lori Baron who did a great job.

Today was a great day for free food -- didn't buy any all day. I wasn't expecting to get a free lunch, but it turns out that this is one of the perks of being on the JSNT editorial board. The food was that Mediterranean stuff -- olives, sun dried tomatoes, mozzarella, all that kind of stuff.

I finally managed to get my strength up to visit the book exhibit today too. I am not a big fan of the book exhibit -- find it depressing seeing all those books -- but I do like meeting people there, and I had a couple of good meetings with publishers.

Another good session today was the Synoptics Section. I went primarily because I wanted to hear Rebekah Eklund's paper on the crowds in the Passion Narrative, which she had initially worked on for my Passion Narratives graduate class last year. She did a great job -- clear, interesting, engaging. But it was a bonus also to catch several other interesting papers, including Joe Weaks's presentation on "MarQ", reconstructing Mark's Gospel on the basis of Matthew and Luke alone as a test for reconstructions of Q. I was on Joe's committee at Brite Divinity School and I really enjoyed his presentation. I don't know whether he forked out $75 for his projector fee but he had a great powerpoint.

It was receptions evening tonight and I took in three -- UNC Chapel Hill, T and T Clark and Duke. All were enjoyable, especially getting the chance to catch up with some old friends. Of course the days of the lavish food are over, but if you are lucky you can grab a cube of cheese and perhaps a cookie. Good if you are a diet.

5 comments:

Joe Weaks said...

Thanks for the kind word. The presentation was in Keynote, not PowerPoint, actually (which is why it looked so nice). And, I think I paid $25.

Mark Goodacre said...

Thanks, Joe. Ah, Keynote. OK. It's outrageous that you had to pay $25, though. As Bob Cargill was saying, people should be being encouraged to do good, illustrated presentations and yours showed the real strength of that.

steph said...

"old" friends. Pfft. Don't rub it in, I'm sensitive! But it was wonderful seeing you again Mark and thank you for your kindness and understanding too. In regard to your previous entertaining post on finding your niche (I wouldn't soil the comments there with old cheerfully sarcastic Rich wanting the family photograph album from the inn to the cross) unless you want to be a mediocre plod, if you don't take informed risks and pursue individual passions and ideas, you won't be much of a scholar and contribute to progress in learning. So naturally you did the right thing. But your advice is correct, to treat all advice with a pinch of salt. Or arsenic.

An Joe - it was lovely to meet you.

steph said...

and Mark, are you coming to the BNTC in London?

Mark Goodacre said...

Thanks, Steph. Sadly can't get to the BNTC these days -- it tends to be the first week of term here.