Professor Alia Al-Saji, McGill University St. Cuthbert’s Society October – December 2012
Alia Al-Saji is associate professor of Philosophy at McGill University. Her philosophical research brings together and critically engages 20th century phenomenology and French philosophy, on the one hand, and contemporary critical race and feminist theories, on the other. Running through her research is an abiding concern for the themes of time and embodiment.
Professor Al-Saji’s research has been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Le fonds de recherche du Québec en société et culture. In 2009, she was awarded a fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and since 2009, she has been a fellow at the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas at McGill University. In addition, Professor Al-Saji has been elected to the executive committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), the second largest philosophical association in North America. She is currently a co-editor of the Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy, and the Feminist Philosophy section editor of Philosophy Compass.
Professor Al-Saji’s research traces two interrelated trajectories. The first explores questions of embodiment, memory and intersubjectivity in terms both of affectivity and perception. The second trajectory of Professor Al-Saji’ s research develops a phenomenology of what has been called “cultural racism.”
While at the IAS, Professor Al-Saji will be completing her book manuscript entitled Bodies and Memories: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and the time of difference. This manuscript not only presents a sustained argument for thinking intersubjectivity temporally, but also brings together her two research trajectories by asking after the ethics and politics of memory and perception. In this vein, the project draws on phenomenological, feminist and critical-race analyses of objectifying—specifically racializing—ways of seeing in order to understand their limits and the possibilities for “seeing differently”.
Dr Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa St John’s College January - March 2013
Dr Jonathan Ben-Dov is senior lecturer at the Department of Bible in the University of Haifa, Israel. His main scholarly agenda is to highlight the role of ancient time-reckoning as Humanities: not only as a technical discipline but rather as a primary source for the construction of identities and the invention of tradition. He studies the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism with other ancient literature. Alongside general studies on biblical historiography and prophecy, he is an expert for time reckoning and astronomy in the Ancient World: the cuneiform culture, Ancient Judaism, and the Hellenistic culture. He has special interest in expressions of scientific ideas – astronomy, astrology and cosmology - in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Dr Ben-Dov has been a co-author (with Shemaryahu Talmon and Uwe Glessmer) of the official publication of calendrical scrolls from Qumran, appearing in Oxford University Press (2001). His book Head of All Yearswas published in 2008. He is currently editing two other collections about ancient calendars and astronomy: Living the Lunar Calendar (with John Steele and Wayne Horowitz), and a volume on Ancient Jewish Sciences (with Seth Sanders), due to appear in New York University Press. Dr Ben-Dov was granted the Michael Bruno Memorial Prize for 2010 (given by the Rothschild Fund in Israel), and has been a fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York University (2010/11). He is director of an inter-university research and graduate group on Jewish Culture in the Ancient World. His current work includes an in depth study of a Jewish astronomy book from the third century BCE (now part of the Book of Enoch), preserved in a variety of languages, including Aramaic and Geez (classical Ethiopic).
During his Fellowship at the IAS Dr Ben-Dov will explore the topic ‘What makes a Year Complete: A Reflection on Law and Ideology in Ancient Jewish Sources.’ In addition he is organising an international conference with Durham’ s, Dr Lutz Doering, ‘The Construction of Time in Antiquity.’
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