Dr Ward Blanton
Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies
contact details
+44 141 330 4990
w.blanton@arts.gla.ac.uk
office hours: Fridays 4:00 - 5:30
about Dr Blanton
Ward Blanton received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University (New Testament program, 2004), where he also worked on continental philosophy. Before that, he studied theories of religion and culture, as well as the intellectual and political contexts driving the modern search for Christian origins (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1998-9); biblical studies and contextual and Reformed theologies (Westminster Seminary, M.Div., 1997); and biblical studies and the history of Christianity (UNC-CH, B.A., 1994).
Ward Blanton is currently Co-chair of the Paul Seminar for the British New Testament Conference and Co-chair of the Social History of Modern Biblical Scholarship Section for the European Association of Biblical Studies.
teaching areas
I like to create classroom environments where comparative models of religion and culture are generated in conversation with students of a diverse array of interests and departmental affiliations. It has always seemed to me that studying early Jewish and Christian writings from the ancient Mediterranean world is profoundly illuminating, and not only because it tells us of another culture from the distant past. In thinking about the other culture we discover a great deal about the world in which we now find ourselves, frequently in unpredictable flashes of comparative insight.
In addition to our standard introduction to the New Testament, currently I am teaching courses on Jesus, Paul and the colonial politics of the Roman empire; early Judaism and Christianity as a question of religion and ancient media; Paul and Hellenistic philosophy; the cultural history of biblical interpretation; and recent readings of Paul as political theology.
research interests
Much of my work until now has focused on the significance of New Testament studies for pressing contemporary questions about religion, secularity and the political, particularly as these have been understood by continental philosophy and critical theory. Modern assumptions about religion and secular society are coming unglued today at intellectual and cultural levels, and I often argue that biblical studies is historically and conceptually well-situated to invent new bearings in light of their collapse.
As a variation on the same theme, the topic of Paul and the philosophers is extremely interesting to me, and I am currently working on a new book tentatively entitled Zero Degree Apostles: Paul, Nihilism, Philosophy. Among other things, the project considers Paul’s striking statements about nothing and non-being against the respective backdrops of Hellenistic philosophy, German Idealism and the modern question of nihilism. I am also beginning to develop another comparative project about religion and communicative technologies called Apparatus and Belief. This one uses media theory to compare early Jewish and Christian texts with modern reflections on print, electronic and digital media in order to emphasize the ways ancient communicative techniques and archival practices installed theological imaginations of divine and human communication, angelic messaging systems, and the sacred aura—and holy terror—of writing itself.
areas of postgraduate supervision
At the moment I am particularly keen to host postgraduate students who are working on Paul, Christian origins and postcolonial analysis, or the cultural history of biblical studies. I will certainly support new readings of Paul that engage (Hellenistic or contemporary) philosophy or efforts to understand early Jewish and Christian religion as a negotiation of Roman imperial presence. It is also an excellent time for students to consider analyzing early Jewish and Christian texts in light of recent discussions about cultural memory or religion and media. Those who are interested in pursuing religion and ancient media should feel free to contact me for a syllabus, bibliography and possible assistance in constructing a research topic.
Local projects
- Download: Badiou conference flyer [pdf]
European Science Foundation Religion and Technology Project- Technology and Religion: Structural Affinities and Cultural Changes
selected publications
Authored, Organized, or Edited Books
Displacing Christian Origins: Philosophy, Secularity, and the New Testament. Chicago : University of Chicago Press (Religion and Postmodernism Series), 2007.
*Shortlisted for the American Academy of Religion Prize for Best First Book in the History of Religions*
Editor (with Hent de Vries), Paul and the Philosophers (Projected 2009).
Editor (with James Crossley and Halvor Moxnes), Jesus Beyond Nationalism: Constructing the Historical Jesus in a Period of Cultural Complexity. London: Continuum, 2009.
Breton, Stanislas (with Critical Introduction by Ward Blanton), Saint Paul (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture). Translated by Joseph Ballan. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
Articles, Chapters
"Introduction: the Bible in Modern Literature," in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature (eds., Christopher Rowland, Emma Mason). London: Blackwell, 2009.
"Neither Secular nor Religious: Saving a Critic in Biblical Criticism," in Roland Boer (ed.). Secularism and Biblical Studies (BibleWorld Series). London : Equinox, 2009.
"On the Post-Liberal Paul and a Mystical Militancy of the Everyday." Angelaki: a Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (2007).
"Disturbing Politics: Neo-Paulinism and the Scrambling of Religious and Secular Identities." Dialog: a Journal of Theology (2007).
"Biblical Scholarship in the Age of Bio-Power: Albert Schweitzer and the 'Degenerate Physiology' of the Historical Jesus." The Bible and Critical Theory (2006).
"Un refus Pauliniste de refus," in Grelet, Gilles and Ray Brassiere (eds.). Théorie-Rébellion: Un ultimatum. Paris : L’Harmattan (2005).
"Apocalyptic Materiality: Return(s) of Early Christian Motifs in Slavoj Žižek’s Depiction of the Materialist Subject." Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (December, 2004).