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nabalkattu.bsky.social
Nabalkattu
@nabalkattu.bsky.social
5.9K followers 980 following 7.9K posts
"A Laid-Back Country Picker with a Laid-Back Country Mind"

McLeod Chair of Classics, Dalhousie University

UC Davis Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies

Ancient Semitic languages and religions, Jewish Studies, Liberation Philology.
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nabalkattu.bsky.social
I love that Indiana just forcibly appointed the most small-minded, vindictive Colonel Klink-type German Christian "Antisemitism Expert" to keep the Jews in Jewish Studies in line
“A Jewish studies graduate student sitting next to me pointed out that Jikeli might be the only one who was bothered,” Constance Furey, a religious studies professor, wrote in an email to university administrators. “Without further comment or explanation, JIkeli then announced that he had removed the student.” Twenty of the 24 people present for the workshop then left and reconvened in a new room, where Ali was allowed to participate. But Jikeli defended himself to everyone in the program later that day in an email describing the avatar as “an image of a Palestinian terrorist.” “Political slogans or provocative images of any kind have no place in our academic settings,” Jikeli wrote. He followed up directly with Ali, proposing that they meet with a mediator to “clear the air.” She instead asked for a public apology and Jikeli’s resignation as interim director. A few days later, Jikeli wrote to Ali again, this time to say that he was unilaterally rejecting a travel grant approved by the Jewish studies funding committee for her to present at a national religious studies conference.
November 14, 2025 at 2:18 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
*chef kissing pallet of wood gesture* 6/5 "wood" buy again
Hi Seth, Thank you for shopping with us! We hope you'll write about your Pallet of Wood while it's still fresh on your mind. Click the stars to get started
November 13, 2025 at 1:51 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Written this morning, an observation of the dawn: in Genesis 1 light is created on the first day but visible light only on the fourth, and in Enūma Eliš Tablet IV the sky is created from half of a goddess' split corpse
the sky is a skull Up out early dim soft blue the morning stars are pinpricks the light shines through the quiet velour inside the giant's skull the world is inside dim soft blue before he made the sun before he made the moon he made the light behind the sky the stars shine through the skull the world is inside the world inside the skull is dim soft blue he made a skull the sky and light shines through
October 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Most reporting on Epstein continues to bury the lede--despite having no financial background, he was doing *something* for a handful of elites that they desperately needed him to keep doing. Here he bullies Leon Black to the tune of $40 million by threatening to stop "working for you."
October 22, 2025 at 10:00 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
muting 'tattoo' along with 'grok' 'musk' and 'meta'
October 22, 2025 at 5:28 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
How Jewish is Dylan's writing? Certainly "inspired by the
priestly distinction between transgression and devotion, the prophetic demand for social justice, and the rabbinic propensity to resist systematic totalization in favor of interrogating issues incessantly," Wolfson writes here...
.
The scope and magnitude of the knowledge of Judaism that Dylan received as a child in Hibbing is debatable, but what is incontest- able is that his lifelong quest for matters of the spirit was inspired by the priestly distinction between transgression and devotion, the prophetic demand for social justice, and the rabbinic propensity to resist systematic totalization in favor of interrogating issues incessantly to answer a question with another question as a way of understanding multiple perspectives.
October 21, 2025 at 5:06 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
THIS IS WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US
Views of Catalhoyuk burials with skeletons painted ochre for funerary ritual
September 30, 2025 at 1:17 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Weird "Friday note" from Dalhousie's president who declared the lockout, shutting students out of class and researchers out of projects. In her framing it's now "the lockout" itself that was responsible--not for lost classes, time, or wages but for "challenging the limits of respectful discourse."
Colleagues, I’ve been urged by some of you to send a message that recognizes the challenge the lockout has created for our community, acknowledges that the weeks and months ahead will require time and repair, and points to the path forward. In attempting many drafts, I’ve been reminded that there is, of course, no email that can do that work. What I can say is this: I believe deeply in this place and in the people who make up Dalhousie. The lockout tested relationships and challenged the limits of respectful discourse. I don’t expect one message to resolve that. I do believe, however, that small and steady acts of care make a difference. As we ramp into the work of this academic year, I will be looking for moments to debrief and unpack, to talk to one another, and to reset our collective table. With gratitude, Kim
September 26, 2025 at 1:33 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Colourful Enochic deadlift (365x2), h/t Nasum "Inhaled/Exhaled/Revived"
A garage with a lot of forest colours and a barbell with blue red green yellow and black weights on it
September 21, 2025 at 8:10 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
WE'RE BACK AND BEGINNING FROM THE BEGINNING (OF LITERATURE):

"Darling Lover of the Dead Dumuzi: Discovering Enheduana, Sumerian Priestess of the Moon-God and the World's First Author"

--This Wednesday at 7:30, Kings College Halifax
Poster with picture of old-timey college campus at night reading “Darling lover of the dead Dumuzi, ...you were born to be a second-rate ruler, but now! How far you surpass all the greatest gods; they press their lips to the dust beneath you. But still my case stays open, and an evil verdict coils around me...” - The Exaltation of Inanna Wednesday, Sept 24, 2025 “DARLING LOVER OF THE DEAD DUMUZI”: DISCOVERING ENHEDUANA, SUMERIAN PRIESTESS OF THE MOON-GOD AND THE WORLD’S FIRST AUTHOR DR. SETH SANDERS, MCLEOD CHAIR OF CLASSICS 7:30 PM KTS LECTURE HALL, KING’S NAB | FREE ADMISSION, OPEN TO ALL
September 19, 2025 at 5:16 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
September 19, 2025 at 12:27 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
The Matt Pike for President sticker got retired from the back of our Challenger RT after its first fender-bender but I'm getting it Canadian street legal with this
September 18, 2025 at 12:27 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
"The only certainty is that if we ever again utter the words 'never again' she will laugh
and laugh,
and laugh..."
Angel flying backwards into the future with caption: "The only certainty is that if we ever again utter the words 'never again' she will laugh and laugh, and laugh..."
September 12, 2025 at 12:10 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Proud to announce my first "publication" in The Wire, in which @emilypothast.bsky.social refutes my oracular statement that "In C" is just "Dark Star" for ppl too uptight for Jam Bands by referencing a bunch of bands I've never heard so I guess the jury's still out.
This approach recalls the compositional logic of Terry Riley's In C, albeit with more internal structure and performer specific-ity. I relay a joke that my friend Seth L Sanders recently made on social media: that "In C is kind of like "Dark Star" for people too uptight for jam bands". In reply, I had pointed out how much these scenes actually overlapped in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1960s - for instance, when future Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Tom Constanten (who were both classically trained) played with Steve Reich in the same ensemble that had debuted In C. While the record industry's genre fixation has tended to separate composer-y minimalism from what was happening in popular music, it was in fact the fluid interchange between avant garde experimentalism and acid-propelled rock that made that particular scene so heady.
September 9, 2025 at 10:22 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Here is Scheidel's full critique: a quip. When Graeber and Wengrow claim that there is “no compelling evidence that ancient Mesopotamian cities... achieved any
measure of real territorial sovereignty” , the modifier “real” does a lot of work.' Scheidel's "evidence" for this is from the modern US.
As the authors survey historical cases, their insistence on a maximalist concept of the state forces them into the already familiar position of all or nothing: if an early polity did not match narrowly defined standards, it was probably not much of a state at all. For example, in a claim that there is “no compelling evidence that ancient Mesopotamian cities, even when ruled by royal dynasties, achieved any measure of real territorial sovereignty” (368), the modifier “real” does a lot of work. State formation was a very drawn-out process, just as the spread of farming, say, or the creation of durable cities that did not fail after a few centuries, and one that is in fact still ongoing. Today’s US looks quite different from that of just a century ago.
September 7, 2025 at 4:19 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Richardson argues that in the mid-3rd millennium BCE "early states’ abilities to control territory have been overstated and we should presume a low-power model" and even into the much later Old Babylonian period (2004–1595 BC)...state control over even very local geography was still unaccomplished."
in section II, I develop a critical historiographic review of a model of territorial sovereignty suggested by the mid third millennium BC Lagas ˇ – Umma border conflict. Here I establish that early states’ inter- ests and abilities to control territory have been overstated and that we should presume a low-power model for early state sovereignty. In sections III–V, I move on to address unresolved historical problems best visible in the much later Old Babylonian period (2004–1595 BC), to argue for early states’ fundamental competi- tion for clientele (for hearts, minds and bodies) rather than for land. The aim of section III is to reinterpret the nineteenth-/ eighteenth-century BC prosecution of ‘small wars’ against ‘little kingdoms’ as normative rather than exceptional; I contend that state control over even very local geography was still unaccom- plished deep into the historical period.
September 7, 2025 at 4:15 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
In the 2,000+ years of ANE history I study, I only noticed one point Scheidel contests, where he criticizes Graeber and Wengrow for a claim based on the work of my Assyriological colleague Seth Richardson that early Mesopotamian city-states never held nearly the level of control they aspired to.
"But early states were incomplete. Less than the sum of their attributes, Mesopotamian polities were more aspirational than operational in their geographic, legal and communitarian sover- eignty. Notwithstanding, their aspirations to sovereignty were very real from a remarkably early stage, even though state powers re- mained incipient and unaccomplished for millennia. In this ap- parent paradox lies the occasion for this essay: even the highly selective types of claims made by early states reveal their simultan- eous deployment of both persuasion and force — not as fully re- alized powers, but as a cohering discourse of desire. Although early states were weak, they were presumptive of an integrated sovereign authority not normally held to be conceived of until the modern period.1 In seeing the ambition of ancient states to ap- propriate and build authority in the very act of claiming it, I argue that early polities can be usefully apprehended in terms normally reserved for modern states, not because their powers were more extensive, integrated or accomplished than has previously been thought — they were not — but because their aspirations were."
September 7, 2025 at 4:09 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
2) but it also protec:
The last part will explore ways to put social theory in a better-supported and more creative dialogue with ancient evidence for Hebrew communication. The article ends by offering a programmatic suggestion on ways to develop such dialogues between data and theory. It draws on two well-documented recent examples of ways to investigate rather than assume the relationship between the attested qualities of a text and the ancient social-communicative situation that produced it. These case studies are not necessarily any more neutral in motivation or free of historical context than any other (indeed, if they had no motivation or context, why would anyone care?), but they make well-supported and historically specific cases for how forms of literary creativity relate to ancient social worlds.
August 29, 2025 at 12:44 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
We can summarize the article's claims using a vulgarism of a few years ago as 1) it attac:
This article argues that biblical studies has relied on one underlying type of social theory since emerging as an independent discipline from theology.1 The idea is that the literary qualities of a text are culturally determined and therefore provide evidence of the qualities of the society that produced it. It was most directly reflected in form criticism and still vibrant today in the concept of “scribal culture.” This theory implies a method of great potential power: that there are ways to read whole aspects of a society off of the form of the texts it leaves behind, and thus reconstitute a lost culture from its traces in literary documents. The theory has been vital to the field because it offers a way to connect the ancient Hebrew literature available to us with the ancient Judah and Israel of 2300+ years ago. But if it offers a welcome way of getting around gaps in our evidence connecting preserved Hebrew literature with ancient Judahite and Israelite history, its application has also led to incoherent and contradictory results.
August 29, 2025 at 12:43 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Breaking: after walking out of good-faith negotiations twice without explanation, Dalhousie's board made a sudden gambit today for 'arbitration' with @dalfaculty.bsky.social It may be a way to save face without addressing the concerns of our lowest-paid, most precarious, and most vulnerable members.
DFA President Dave Westwood writes: "Many of you have asked about the possibility of binding arbitration as an ‘off-ramp’ to the current impasse. Labour law in Nova Scotia requires both parties to consent to binding arbitration. It is possible that at some point binding arbitration might be attractive to both parties, but it is important for DFA Members to be aware that while agreeing to proceed to binding arbitration would resolve the issue of wages (i.e., the arbitrator would award a wage settlement based on arguments and evidence advanced by both parties), it is probable that none of our other “language” proposals would be addressed or resolved. This means we would likely not make any progress on issues that we know are priorities for the membership, such as a pathway to permanence for limited-term appointments, and expanded childcare and parental leave benefits. We need to return to negotiations at the table to make progress on all of our bargaining priorities since we know wages are not the only issue that matters. To put it another way, binding arbitration would be premature at this time, as it would short-circuit critical negotiations on important issues."
August 27, 2025 at 8:07 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Ornette Coleman playing pool in his loft. His revolutionary 1961 "Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation" was probably the richest and most challenging piece of music of the mid-20th century. Photo by Martine Barrat.
Ornette Coleman focused on a pool game in an austere but beautifully decorated loft with a colourful modernist African painting in the background.
August 27, 2025 at 11:14 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
As someone who used to literally make his living promoting UChicago's reputation in humanities (I was their Public Relations writer for humanities, arts and religion from 2001-2004, and had life transformed by it, using a postdoc to relaunch my academic career), I had to at least try.
Dear President Alivisatos and Dean Nelson, I used to literally make my living promoting Chicago's reputation in humanities ( was U Chicago's Public Relations writer for humanities, arts and religion from 2001-2024 and am still proud of the work I did there). So I feel compelled to write now to warn of major harm to this hard-earned reputation. The announcement of cuts to graduate programs and threatened restructuring has hit the world of humanities and social sciences like a shockwave, making an impact well beyond what could have been intended. I have seen promiment alums speak of "the Death of the University of Chicago" and while an exaggeration, I can imagine many alums and donors wondering what truth it may signal. I urge you to get ahead of this reputational problem and turn it around by giving a clear path to graduate humanities and social science education to thrive before it reshapes how the world sees Chicago. Chicago's graduate education transformed my own career; from a writer I became the first postdoctoral scholar at Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, launching a productive career which has led me to an endowed chair in Classics. In hopes this tradition has another 135 years of life in it, Seth Sanders Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Emeritus, UC Davis McLeod Chair of Classics, Dahousie University
August 25, 2025 at 9:03 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Given that Dalhousie's revenue increased by $18,000,000 this year and most of that has gone to things like 'equity in capital' rather than things like full-time language teaching (which has been slashed) it's unclear where the money is going.
August 18, 2025 at 1:30 PM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
Their case is pretty clear: they're the ones laying the groundwork for new research and bringing new ideas to help solve Canada’s challenges. They just want to be able to build lives in Halifax!

That's why they want to vote "no" on the board's honestly rather contemptuous-looking offer.
Early-career DFA members are Dalhousie’s future. We are the cohorts laying the groundwork for research innovation, building new labs, and bringing new ideas to solve Nova Scotia's (and Canada’s) pressing challenges. We want to live, work, and raise families in Halifax, and are simply looking for the working conditions that will let us succeed in the careers we have worked so hard to pursue at Dalhousie.
August 14, 2025 at 12:07 AM
nabalkattu.bsky.social
A powerful letter outlines why Dalhousie is becoming a less welcoming place for new faculty and how to fix it. Meanwhile the Board inexplicably chose these aspiring new teachers as the ones to flex a Dilbert-boss style "power move" on by suddenly walking out on the Government-appointed conciliator.
the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert Dear colleagues, friends, and fellow DFA members, As early-career DFA members, we deeply value our university, the students who inspire us, the colleagues who support us, and the research that drives our passion. Dalhousie University is where we hope to dedicate our academic careers. However, the current offer, particularly the inadequate IMC proposal, harms untenured and precarious faculty and instructors (such as Limited Term Appointment appointees) by ignoring rising costs of living that disproportionately impact cohorts hired since 2020. With our unique circumstances in mind, we urge that you vote NO on this final offer by the Board. Proposed 2% IMC for the next 3 years is an effective salary cut and a stall to our wages relative to inflation. Dalhousie already pays faculty $3,000 less compared to the median U15 faculty member. This pay gap is most severe for the average assistant professor ($7,000 gap compared to U15 median)1,2. As such, meaningful IMC adjustments are not a luxury, but rather necessary to address this gap for all faculty and keep Dalhousie University an attractive place for early career faculty to forge a career. With rapidly increasing costs of basic life necessities such as food and housing, Halifax is no longer the affordable home it once was. The median home price rose 67% between 2019 to 2022 in the Halifax Regional Municipality, with current house prices sitting near $600,0003,4. At the same time, grocery and utility costs have continued to increase. Between January 2021 (CPI = 140.3) and June 2025 (167.7), Stats Canada registered nearly a 20% increase in cost of living in Nova Scotia. While Halifax is becoming one of the most expensive places to live in Canada5, Dalhousie maintains below market wages and is not willing to make fair adjustments to faculty salaries. For early career faculty who wish to bring their talent, skills, and innovation to our province, these costs are a significant barrier when wages fail to keep pace. While all faculty experience these issues, untenured and precarious faculty and instructors are particularly vulnerable to these financial squeezes due to the dramatic rise in costs that coincided with the time many of us moved here to begin our careers. Why won’t the Board consider IMC Iterations that offer untenured and precarious employees equitable parity with other ranks, and bring us in line with salary comparisons at the assistant rank with other U15 Universities? And, if the Board continues to have no appetite for a meaningful IMC offer, why do so many bargaining issues that would help make life more affordable and Dalhousie more attractive to early career talent - improving child care, Indigenous leave, parental leave, and stronger health spending accounts - all remain unaddressed in bargaining? Providing fair cost of living adjustments should be recognised as an important investment by the university in its most valuable assets - people. Instead of working together to find a common path forward, we have become the ‘solution’ through wage cuts. Not only does this demonstrate a lack of respect for early career faculty and instructors and DFA members more broadly, but it also further erodes Dalhousie’s reputation as a competitive university that attracts global talent. Early-career faculty and instructors at Dalhousie have the most to lose from accepting the current offered contract. We also have the least input into our working conditions, but will live with these working conditions the longest of any current faculty.
August 13, 2025 at 11:58 PM