Monographs | Anthologies | Articles & Chapters | Exhibition Catalogs | Sermons
Icon of Loss: The Haunting Child of Samuel Bak. Co-authored with Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Art Publications/ Syracuse University Press, 2009.
In this examination of Samuel Bak's most recent collection of paintings inspired by the little boy from the famous Stroop Report photo taken in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943, Gary A. Phillips and Danna Nolan Fewell consider the historical and visual implications of this iconic image and its contemporary evocations. A survivor of the Vilna liquidation and a child prodigy whose first exhibition was held in the Vilna Ghetto at age nine, Bak weaves together personal history and Jewish history to articulate an iconography of his Holocaust experience. Bak's art preserves memory of the twentieth-century ruination of Jewish life and culture by way of an artistic passion and precision that stubbornly announces the creativity of the human spirit.
The Children of Israel: Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our Children. Abingdon, 2003.
In The Children of Israel, Danna Nolan Fewell explores how imaginative readings of selected scriptural texts might raise adult consciousness and responsibility toward children. Through stories, quotes, vignettes, and notes, Fewell provides different kinds of reading experiences, with different levels of coherence and disjunction, depending on how much the reader decides to delve into the critical apparatus or the framing dialogues. This work is designed to unsettle, to plant suggestions and questions, and to create space for reflection and conversation. It is an experiment to see if a postmodern reading of the Bible can provide a credible ethical vision that can inspire us to do a better job of caring for our children.
Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Co-authored with David Gunn. Oxford University Press, 1993.
After almost two centuries of historical criticism, biblical scholarship has recently taken major shifts in direction, most notably toward literary study of the Bible. Much germinal criticism has taken as its primary focus narrative texts of the Hebrew Bible (the "Old Testament"). This study provides a lucid guide to the interpretive possibilities of this movement. Attempting to be both theoretical and practical, it combines discussion of methods and the business of reading in general with numerous illustrations through readings of particular texts. Gunn and Fewell discuss how literary criticism is related to other dominant ways of reading the text over the last two thousand years. In addition, they address characters, including the narrator and God; plot, modifying recent theory to accommodate the peculiar complexity of biblical narratives; and the play of language through repetition, ambiguity, multivalence, metaphor, and intertextuality. Finally, the authors discuss readers and responsibility, exploring the ideological dimension of narrative interpretation. An extensive bibliography completes the book, arranged by subject and biblical text.
Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story. Co-authored with David Gunn. Abingdon, 1993.
Reading Scripture anew, the authors contend, is each time an exercise of power. It is always invested in ideology, whether spoken or unspoken. By adopting the viewpoints of marginalized women, and by examining the motivations of the male characters as they deploy power, Fewell and Gunn seek an approach to biblical interpretation that promises to liberate women and men from, rather than reinforce, religious ideologies of male dominance.
Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth. Co-authored with David M. Gunn. Westminster/John Knox, 1990. (Nominated for the Jewish Book Award.) New ed., Wipf and Stock, 2009.
"We are interested in subverting the notion of 'type' when it comes to biblical characters. We prefer, instead, to see the characters in Ruth as complex people, not merely built around a single primary trait, like loyalty, altruism, or generosity.
People may exhibit conflicting traits and are often different people. There is no reason why the same should not be true of literary characters. Accordingly we have tried not to define the 'selves' of this narrative too tightly, and if we have overdetermined them, we recognize that as a fault. In short, the characters of this story have far more diverse possibilities of life in the minds of readers than we can ever give them." —from the Introduction
Circle of Sovereignty: Plotting Politics in the Book of Daniel. Abingdon, 1991 (1st ed., Circle of Sovereignty: A Story of Stories in Daniel 1 6 Sheffield Academic Press, 1988).
How do politics govern the plot and motivate the characters of the book of Daniel? By revealing a complex pattern of religious/political dynamics not found in other more superficial studies of Daniel, the author of this study provides an essential alternative to standard historical-critical interpretations of this key Old Testament book.
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Representing the Irreparable: The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak. Co-edited with Gary A. Phillips and Yvonne Sherwood. Pucker Art Publications/Syracuse University Press, 2008.
The art of Samuel Bak depicts a world destroyed and yet provisionally pieced back together. Across nearly seven decades of artistic production Samuel Bak has explored and reworked a set of metaphors, a visual grammar and vocabulary, that ultimately privileges questions. Bak's pictorial readings invite reconsideration of the Post-Reformation privileging of word over image, and of the Post-Enlightenment privileging of reason over experience. Bak preserves memory of the twentieth century ruination of Jewish life and culture by way of an artistic passion and precision that stubbornly announces the creativity of the human spirit.
Bible and Ethics of Reading, (Semeia 77). Co-edited with Gary Phillips. Scholars Press, 1997.
"Our aim thereby is to encourage our readers to parse the language of the title: To think about what they have come to expect about reading, ethics, Bible. To think of ethics of reading as something more than any new or different paradigm that reinscribes familiar practices and assumptions. ...
All of the essays here struggle with reading as if it were a matter of life and death. They follow no prescribed path, and in this way they reflect the current ethos of ethics talk. They are heterogeneous and idiosyncratic in terms of form (some are purposefully autobiographical, others more formal essays), authorship (some are collaboratively written), argumentative style (some more philosophical, some more exegetical), social location (some are written from an outside or are marginally self-identified in terms of a culture, country, race and ethnicity), religious expression (some are Jews, some Christians), and texts of analysis (canonical and noncanonical, literary and visual)." —from the Introduction
"Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible. Westminster/John Knox, 1992.
New currents in biblical interpretation are emerging. Questions about origins—authors, intentions, settings—and stages of composition are giving way to questions about the literary qualities of the Bible, the plays of its language, the coherence of its final form, and the relations between text and readers.
Such literary criticism is rapidly acquring sophistication as it learns from major developments in secular critical theory, especially in understanding the instability of languageand the key role of readers in the production of meaning. ...
In recent years, intertextuality, already an important conception in literary theory, has become a lively topic of discussion in biblical studies. Offering new insights into textual relations, intertextuality is changin the way we think about textual production and interpretation." —from the Preface and Introduction
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"Seeing Fear on the Heights of Moriah: Communal Anxiety and the Akedah," Wrestling with the Akedah. Edited by Murray Haar. Wifp and Stock, forthcoming.
"The Qur'an's Unbinding of the Song: A Response to Walid Saleh," Wrestling with the Akedah. Edited by Murray Haar. Wifp and Stock, forthcoming.
"No Greater Love: Jonathan and his Friendship with David in Text, Tradition, and Contemporary Children's Literature," (co-authored), In the Picture: Otherness in Children's Bibles. Edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh Pyper. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL, 2010, forthcoming.
"A Broken Hallelujah: Remembering David, Justice, and the Cost of the House," The Fate of King David. Edited by Timothy K. Beal, Claudia Camp, and Tod Linafelt. Continuum, 2010, 111-133.
"From Bak to the Bible: Imagination, Interpretation, and Tikkun Olam," (co-authored) ARTS 21:1 (2009) 21-30.
"Remembering Angels: The Memory Work of Samuel Bak, (co-authored) Society of Biblical Literature Forum 7.4, 2009. [read online]
"Genesis, Genocide, and the Art of Samuel Bak", (co-authored) in Representing the Irreparable : The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak. Danna Nolan Fewell, Gary A. Phillips, and Yvonne Sherwood, eds. Syracuse University Press, forthcoming.
"Bak's Impossible Memorials: Giving Face to the Children," (co-authored) in Representing the Irreparable : The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak. Danna Nolan Fewell, Gary A. Phillips, and Yvonne Sherwood, eds. Syracuse University Press, forthcoming.
"Viol, lecture et representation en Genèse 34," in Guide des nouvelles lectures de la Bible. Andre Lacoque, ed. Paris: Bayard Press, 2005.
"The Genesis of Israelite Identity: A Narrative Speculation on Postexilic Interpretation", in Reading Communities Reading Scripture: Essays in Honor of Daniel Patte. Gary A Phillips and Nicole Wilkerson, eds. Trinity Press International, 2002.
"Building Babel," in Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible—A Reader A. K. M. Adam, ed. Chalice Press, 2001.
"The Gift: World Alteration and Obligation in 2 Kings 4," in A Wise and Discerning Mind: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long Saul Olyan and Robert Culley, eds. Brown Judaic Studies, 2000.
"Changing the Subject: Retelling the Story of Hagar the Egyptian," in Genesis: A Feminist Companion to the Bible (Series II). Athalya Brenner, ed. Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
"Drawn to Excess, or Reading Beyond Betrothal," (co-authored) in Bible and Ethics of Reading, (Semeia 77). Scholars Press, 1997.
"Ethics, Bible, Reading As If," (co-authored) in Bible and Ethics of Reading, (Semeia 77). Scholars Press, 1997.
"Imagination, Method, and Murder: Un/Framing the Face of Post-Exilic Israel," in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: God, Identity, and the Book. Timothy K. Beal and David M. Gunn, eds. London/New York: Routledge, 1996.
"Shifting the Blame: God in the Garden," (co-authored), in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: God, Identity, and the Book. Timothy K. Beal and David M. Gunn, eds. London/New York: Routledge, 1996.
"Deconstructive Criticism: Achsah and the (E)razed City of Writing," in Judges and Method. Gale A. Yee, ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1995.
"Reading the Bible Ideologically: Feminist Criticism," in To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application. Stephen Haynes and Steven McKenzie, eds. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993.
"Joshua," in The Women's Bible Commentary, Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe, eds. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992.
"Narrative, Hebrew," (co authored) Anchor Bible Dictionary. Garden City: Doubleday, 1992.
"Tipping the Balance: Sternberg's Reader and the Rape of Dinah," (co-authored) Journal of Biblical Literature 110 (1991) 193-211.
"Controlling Perspectives: Women, Men, and the Authority of Violence in Judges 4 and 5," (co-authored) Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (1990) 101-123.
"Feminist Hermeneutics," Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, Mercer University Press, 1990.
"Inclusive God Language," Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, Mercer University Press, 1990.
"Is Coxon a Scold? On Responding to the Book of Ruth," (co-authored) Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 45 (1989) 39-43.
"Boaz, Pillar of Society: Measures of Worth in the Book of Ruth," (co-authored) JSOT 45 (1989) 45-59.
"Divine Calls, Human Responses: Another Look at Abraham and Sarah," Perkins Journal (1988) 13-16. Reprinted in The Navy Chaplain.
"'A Son is Born to Naomi!' Literary Allusion and Interpretation in the Book of Ruth," (co authored), JSOT 40 (1988) 99-108. Reprinted in Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, Alice Bach, ed. Routledge, 1999.
"Feminist Reading of the Hebrew Bible: Affirmation, Resistance and Transformation," JSOT 39 (1987) 77-87.
"Sennacherib's Defeat: Words at War in II Kings 18:13 19:37," JSOT 34 (1986) 79-90.
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The Art of the Question: Paintings by Samuel Bak. With Gary A. Phillips, Sarah Lynn Henry, and Beth Benedix. Pucker Gallery Publications, 2009.
Icon of Loss: Recent Paintings by Samuel Bak. Co-Authored with Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Gallery Publications, 2008.
Remembering Angels: The Art of Samuel Bak. Co-Authored with Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Gallery Publications, 2007.
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"Divine Calls, Human Responses: Another Look at Abraham and Sarah," The Navy Chaplain, Fall, 1989.
"Dear Orpah, A Sermon from the Chapel," The Perkins Perspective, Winter, 1991.
"Hannah's Song, A Sermon from the Chapel," The Perkins Perspective, Fall, 1995.
"Sacred Spaces, Sacred Traces on the Journey from Here to There," The Theo Spirit, Drew University, 2002.
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