The Dorushe Graduate Student Association held their first annual conference at CUA, February 3-5, 2006.  The occasion took the form of a workshop on the theme of “Syriac Pedagogy”, and was supported in part by the Center, together with the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, the School of Theology and Religious Studies, the Graduate Student Association, the Libraries of the Catholic University of America, the Dominican House of Studies, and Beth Mardutho (Dorushe’s parent affiliate).

 

Guest of honor was Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Brown University), who gave a keynote address entitled, "Syriac and the Academic Life: Reflections and Suggestions”; and we were fortunate to overlap with a visit to the Center by Dr Joel Walker (University of Washington, Seattle), who was able to stay the extra days.  We were delighted to have with us also Dr George Kiraz of Beth Mardutho and the Gorgias Press.

 

The following presented papers:

Scott Girdner (Boston University), “The Potential for Syrian Orthodox Apologetic Literature in Presenting the Development of Mu‘tazilite Kalām: the Debate of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdī and Timothy I in its context”

Linda Wheatley Irving (University of Chicago), “Teaching Early Syriac Christianity with Images and the Concept of Visuality”

Young Kim (University of Michigan), “Syriac and the Greek Middle: Why I Learned Syriac Late in Graduate School”

Daniel King (University of Cardiff), “The Translation of Greek into Syriac: Models for Cultural Networking”

Jonathan Loopstra (Catholic University), “Syriacists in the Seminary: towards a More Integrated Approach”

David Michelson (Princeton University), “Developing Electronic Databases for Syriac Studies”

Ophir Münz-Manor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “From Ephrem to Yannai: the Rise of Late Antique Hymnography”

Michael Penn (Mount Holyoke College), “Beyond Add and Stir: Teaching Syriac Christianity”

 

The Association will be holding its second conference in 2007, and relevant information will be displayed both here and at http://www.bethmardutho.org/dorushe.