John Reeves, Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has received a prestigious American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship for 2015-16 to work on the project “Illuminating the Afterlife of Ancient Apocryphal Jewish Literature.”
This year, ACLS made 70 awards to faculty of all ranks and independent scholars to support research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. The organization received more than 1,000 applications in this cycle, making the program once again the most competitive in ACLS’s portfolio.
Reeves’ project concentrates upon the history of the transmission of ancient Jewish literary texts and non-canonical lore among a variety of Near Eastern religious communities and movements during late antiquity and the early medieval period.
Relatively little attention has been devoted to exploring the afterlife of apocryphal works among literate circles within the Islamicate cultural sphere wherein Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other scriptural communities were active contributors and interlocutors. Shining light on the shadows that obscure this lively textual commerce and unraveling the tangled web produced by the intercultural sharing of extracanonical textual lore are the project’s primary goals.
ACLS competition judges commented that Reeves’ project is “… a fascinating project of hidden cultural history … [with] significant value for the humanities ….”; “… the culmination of long years of detailed research and confirms the applicant as uniquely positioned to carry out the plan of work”; “it cannot be stressed how important it is to fill this lacuna … a breath of fresh air in a very constricted discipline ….”
A native North Carolinian, Reeves came to UNC Charlotte in 1996 after serving as assistant and then associate professor of religious studies at Winthrop University.
ACLS Fellowships allow scholars to spend six to 12 months on full-time research and writing.
The American Council of Learned Societies is a prominent consortium of American learned and professional societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Modern Language Association and the American Academy of Religion.