KATHERINE A. SHANER

FELLOWSHIP SPOTLIGHT

Wake Forest School of Divinity holds classes in Wingate Hall during the week of March 20th, 2017 on its campus in Winston-Salem, NC.

ASOR is pleased to announce that Dr. Katherine A. Shaner of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity is the 2017 recipient of the William G. Dever Fellowship for Biblical Scholars. The fellowship was established in 2015 to award a qualified American non-tenured faculty member in the field of biblical studies with a $7000 grant to be used to gain elementary, first-hand experience in field archaeology and research in Israel.
The intent of the award is to help foster a dialogue between archaeology and biblical studies in colleges, universities, and seminaries, as well as in the larger discipline.

The fellowship provides funding for one month on a specified dig, combined with a one-month residency (room and half-board) at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, which will allow the Dever Fellow to conduct research in the Albright library. During residency, the Albright Institute will facilitate visits to excavations active in the field.

Previously, in her book Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), Dr. Shaner researched the archaeological excavations at Ephesus to describe how the site’s inscriptions, built environment, and relief images “fundamentally change the context in which we read historical enslaved actors through early Christian texts 1 Corinthians, Philemon, 1 Timothy, Ignatius’s letters.”

Now, as she turns her attention to Israel, Katherine Shaner writes, “My research agenda for the next few years aims to develop new methodologies for working with the archaeological materials from Roman-era urban areas which provide context for and contact with both Jewish and Jesus-following communities . . . This introduction to archaeology in Israel affords me the opportunity to think with excavators about how archaeological methods can illuminate everyday life . . . and widen my perspectives on the material contexts of the earliest Jewish and Christian communities.”

Dr. Shaner will be participating in the Omrit Settlement Excavation Project.

To learn more about the archaeological site of Omrit, click here.