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I just wanna say welcome everyone to the library and

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that was going on this time of year, particularly

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today in general space. That better together really to

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celebrate scholarship. That's what we're really talking about really

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. That's, that's for so on brian Matthews this is

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my third week started the third week here and to

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say I'm really, you know, noticed posters for

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this the first day I was here actually proud and

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excited that we have this program is times with the

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scholarship focus on the property of the article. The

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conference paper. Has this been a program allows us

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to really solve when the stages that go into the

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reason, the effort, creativity and everything. The

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research, the hard work that goes into creating.

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Yeah. What? And this is a wonderful partnership

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that we have with liberal arts and human sciences and

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it So you think a lot about seven neighbors,

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a geologist, geographer. And also I often talk

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about his research was, but it's nice to sell

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just steps in the process long after the grants collecting

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the data writing is that it allows us to everyone

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and bring in a have to talk about their work

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and really kind of get behind what went into creating

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management. Just let that cost piece of. So

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it's better to do invite uh Rowlands was the Dean

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of the Culture. Works Fine to introduce our speakers

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. Thank you. Um thank you all for being

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here. This is the second event of our visible

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Scholars scholarship initiative. I'm a little short on voice

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today, so you'll have to forgive me. I'm

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actually making comments and uh our Associate Dean, this

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place tom ewing is taking my place in Richmond at

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a meeting place. So we sort of switch roles

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, but we're very excited to be partnering with libraries

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on the visible scholarship initiative. And as brian pointed

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out, this is a way for us to sort

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of mhm peel off the layers of the end product

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, which is is hardly an end product because of

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course brian britton's book will go on to be used

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by other scholars to create more new knowledge. But

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at least at this point in the process we can

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kind of peel away some of the layers and here

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, brian talked to us about how the resources represented

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here and I'm sure many others went into making impossible

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for him to write the book that he is with

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. The library is very important to scholars working in

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the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and we

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really appreciate the working partnership we have with the library

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. So without further ado, let me introduce our

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scholar of the day, BRian Grete, a professor

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of Religion and Culture, religious studies in the Department

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of Religion and Culture. Is that how you would

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say? Yes, thanks very much. Thank you

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all very much. Especially want to thank tom ewing

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and Leslie moyo for putting this event together. I

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want to thank all the people of the library and

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in the college who have worked on this and made

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it possible. I want to thank students and colleagues

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and friends and others who are here today. I

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thought I would just spend maybe about 10 minutes talking

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about this project, telling the story of the project

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and um and then leave some time for discussion after

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that. If there is interest in that, I

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started work on this project, I checked this afternoon

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on this when I taught a story by flannery O'Connor

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, one of my favorite american writers. One of

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the last stories she wrote is a story called Revelation

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. And in that story, flannery O'Connor's characters are

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sitting in a waiting room in a doctor's office and

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there's there are two characters we're gonna focus on particularly

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. Um One is named Mary Grace and she's a

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she's a college student who has just come back from

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some liberal arts college in the Northeast. And then

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there's mrs ruby Turpin who is a middle aged woman

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in the in the waiting room and at some point

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with no provocation, no warning at all, mary

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Grace takes a book called Human Development and she throws

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it at ruby Turpin and she says to this person

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, why don't you go back to hell where you

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came from, you old warthog? And it was

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in the process of teaching that that I also I

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noticed a couple of things uh partly by chance and

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partly from discussion with students. One of them was

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that this is a strange kind of thing. This

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is a story about a curse and in the story

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, what happens is that Mrs Turpin decides that God

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was speaking to her when mary Grace threw the book

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at her and insulted her and cursed her. She

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, instead of thinking, as most people would that

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this was an outrageous and irresponsible and rude act,

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Mrs Turpin thinks that this was actually a revelation from

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God and she proceeds to experience it like that at

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the end of the story. So that struck me

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as strange, that here's a story in which a

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person utters a curse and it leads to a revelation

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. The second thing that I noticed about this story

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Is that it has a lot in common with a

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story in the Bible in 2nd Samuel 16, where

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somebody sees King David and insults him in a very

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similarly profane and vulgar way, it actually throws things

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at him. And instead of saying, oh,

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that's just an insulting expression, David says, well

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, maybe this is somehow God talking to me.

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And so this project began and I gave a paper

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on this particular story and the connection that had to

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the bible In the year 2000. And then that

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started this whole process uh, of, of exploring

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the question of biblical curses and their after lives and

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their their inheritance in our culture today. And I

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don't want to tell the whole story. It's a

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very long one. But I will say a couple

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of things about the process of learning. I started

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reading everything I could about biblical curses and contemporary curses

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and the theory of curses. And when I was

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doing that, I made a kind of, what

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I felt like was kind of a discovery and the

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discovery was that Sometime in the early modern period in

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the 17th century cursing changed in a very dramatic way

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it went from being, It went from being powerful

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to being profane. So that cursing was no longer

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something you could do to somebody else to hurt them

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. It was now something that you shouldn't do because

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it's not very polite. And so I tried to

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learn a little bit about that process and I,

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in my way, I'm not a historian. I

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I see colleagues from the history department here who,

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who will correctly notice that there's more to be said

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about this. My guess was and still is that

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in the early modern period, one of the things

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that happened around the 17th century is that cursing became

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vulgar rather than profane because vulgar rather than powerful because

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there was too much religious power going around after the

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reformation. There were too many different ways a religious

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authority was being spoken about. And so there needed

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to be some way to neutralize cursing. But there's

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something else I noticed in the process of this research

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as well. Not only was there a change from

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power to profanity, but there was also a,

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uh, other kinds of powerful speech. Continued blessing

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, for example, is still something that you hear

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all the time. Every time someone sneezes in my

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class, someone else says God bless you. So

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blessing is very common, but no one, no

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one says God curse you. Uh, so I

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was curious why certain kinds of powerful speech still exist

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and other kinds of powerful speech change or go away

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. And that leads to the next point. I

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started to think about the next point was, and

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this is part of a larger discussion. The point

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was that, that there's a story we tell ourselves

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in the way we talk about religious change. Uh

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Normally, normally we talk about religious change as a

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story called secularization, that religious institutions and religious practices

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and religious beliefs slowly and gradually decline from the early

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modern period until the present. We all know that

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that story isn't exactly correct and we've been spending a

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lot of time in the study of religion in the

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last few decades trying to understand what's wrong with that

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story of secularization and how to fix that problem.

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In some small way, I saw this project as

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a way to think about that problem because I saw

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the changes that were happening as uneven blessing stays cursing

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goes away or cursing changes. And I started to

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try to think of a better way to talk about

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this than secularization. And I started thinking of it

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in terms that I borrowed from Sigmund Freud of all

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people. This concept of displacement in displacement, you

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take one thing away and you replace it with another

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, but you do it in certain ways at certain

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times for certain kinds of reasons. And you might

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not be able to predict the nature of displacement and

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there might be layers to it. There might be

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, there might be a conscious change that goes on

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, but there might be something that continues, there

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might be something that continues or persists. There might

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be some uh inheritance or some shadow or some some

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specter of, of cursing or the religious tradition that

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we still have around after we think we got rid

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of it. So I used I developed in this

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this project concept of displacement to talk about religious change

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. And I used these changes that I observed in

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the study of biblical curses as as a chance to

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to apply that. So I decided to divide the

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book into three parts. There are some studies of

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texts in the bible curses, in the bible covenant

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curses. There's also a study of some ethnic curses

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in the bible that are quite interesting to me,

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Curse of Canaan and the Curse of the Gibby Nights

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. And then I have a second section of the

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book in which I talk about this transition. I

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thought I noticed in the early modern period, from

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the power to the profanity, the 17th century transition

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in which people were anxious about too much cursing and

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the danger of cursing. And I read people like

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Bunyan and defoe and many others particularly to see how

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this change took place. So that's the second part

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of the book, the early modern. And then

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I finally finished with a piece uh in in the

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book on contemporary curses. And that brings me to

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a variety of other p projects that I'll again very

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briefly mentioned. The first of these was a chapter

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that went all the way back to the flannery O'Connor

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story. I started with and I paired it with

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another wonderful story by Zora Neale Hurston called Sweat.

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And I was interested in seeing how these literary authors

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were, in a way stealing the thunder of religious

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tradition and religious cursing and applying it through displacements in

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new ways. There's also a chapter on a particular

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, a different ethnic curse. Not one I deal

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with earlier, but the most powerful ethnic curse in

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the Hebrew bible from Exodus 17 on the al maliki

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. It's and how that plays out in a number

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of literary theorists and thinkers like Jacques Derrida, and

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then finally, the most perhaps user friendly chapter of

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the book is one in which I talk about the

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debates, contemporary debates on hate speech. Uh,

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and the two cases I I looked at pretty closely

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our first of all, um, the Westboro baptist

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church, which unfortunately is still in the news today

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, even on campus here. And secondly, uh

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religious curse that has been used in the state of

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Israel two to bring about the death of, of

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politicians who are not popular with the people who make

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those curses. It's called Tulsa Dinora and it was

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used against Yitzhak rabin and it was used against Ariel

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Sharon and it's been used against other Israeli politicians by

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right wing, uh, Israeli religious people. And

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the question was of course, is this powerful or

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not? Did these words work or not? So

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, one of the final conclusions of the book turned

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out to be that through all of these three periods

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that I look at from a from a kind of

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snapshot perspective, there's a question that people share across

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those periods, and the question simply is, do

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words have power to hurt other people? Can words

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hurt other people? It turns out that the biblical

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texts also are asking that question, they're not all

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sure in the biblical texts, that curses are good

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or effective or powerful. And so one of the

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things I see handed down through these very disparate some

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secular, some religious texts is that perennial question of

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whether words can hurt other people. So that's the

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story of the book I'd like to close just by

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saying how grateful I am to this library for being

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a home that supported this research. I I also

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want to thank the university for being the larger institutional

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home that supported this research. It supported trips to

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libraries in Israel and England. It supported me giving

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papers and workshop presentations on this project over the last

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10 years. Uh it supported most of all,

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giving me the time and the colleagues and the students

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to to make this kind of work possible. Uh

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, so I'm very grateful for those opportunities and I'd

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love to hear your questions or comments, the anecdote

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from flannery just today, on the radio, I

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heard a reference to another curse and throwing objects.

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The Iraqi newsman, yes, threw his shoes at

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our unlamented former president. One of the things I

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one of the side questions that really fascinates me about

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cursing is that they often require a physical gesture as

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well, um like throwing shoes, um or in

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the case of of covenant, when you make a

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covenant in the bible, the language actually is to

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cut a covenant, and what that means is that

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you take an animal, apologies to the vegans and

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vegetarians, you take an animal and you cut it

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in half and you set it on two separate tables

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and then you walk between the two pieces of cut

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up animal. And the point of this is that

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you are you are uttering are you performing a conditional

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curse if I violate the terms of this agreement,

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may this happen to me? Uh May I be

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cut up like this? Animal is being cut up

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? And so animal sacrifice, which is such an

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important part of religious traditions, are actually often,

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not always, but often conditional curses. And there

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are a few examples in the bible where David and

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others say made this happen to me or May such

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and such happen to me. If we have to

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imagine him doing this or this or today, it

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would be this. There's a gesture that has to

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go along with a curse very often. And so

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one of the more abstract questions I was asking was

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what happens when you take a verbal speech act,

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which involves physical performance and put it down in writing

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. And I think that's really what what happens in

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the biblical curse situation. They're trying to somehow encode

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in writing, uh, an action that's normally done

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in person very often with physical gestures. Yeah,

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yeah. Haven't just relate to sticks and stones may

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break my bones. Thank you. Uh, this

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is one of the changes I think that we we

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see and somehow I date to the early modern period

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. The idea that sticks and stones may break my

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bones, but names can never hurt me. To

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me. That's a modern idea or an enlightenment idea

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that says, words are just, they're just an

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instrument or a tool in the hand of the of

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the individual, of the thinking, rational modern person

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. And this is not the same as the pre

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modern ideas of cursing that I've been talking about.

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And the normal story that we would tell is the

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story of secularization that says yes, in the old

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days, we were primitive and we thought that words

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could hurt people, but then we became modern and

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rational and we discovered that words are just tools,

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names can never hurt me. But the story I

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want to tell is a much more complicated story in

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which words still seem able to hurt people and we

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don't really have a very good way to talk about

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that anymore, because we've vanished some of those traditional

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ways of talking about the power of words. And

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so yeah, that's that's precisely what happens in the

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early modern period. This idea of of of banishing

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curses from, from mainstream modern, rational ways of

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thinking and talking, even though we didn't banish blessings

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and we didn't banish oaths. Mm Well you did

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, you banished blessings as well. Mm you're now

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you can always say Gazoontite. I don't know if

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that's a blessing or not. Yeah, I guess

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that's a blessing to we're not off the hook with

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Gazoontite. Yeah. Well, brian. Yeah,

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I agree that uh huh the curses are quite often

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company bye movements of some type of another. As

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you know, I've studied several languages and it seems

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like everywhere you go, people will tell you this

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when you talk about language. Well I was there

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and guess what I learned, I learned this first

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thing you learn, right? So people always say

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that you see these movements and things like that.

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I'm just wondering, you know, to give an

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example, my wife is from Holland and when I

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, and I'm from south texas, so I use

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as colorful language, you know, as Texans I

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want to do and she's quite put off watch from

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quite all right. Thanks. And me part of

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Holland where they keep everything clean, including their mouth

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And, but now that she's been in America for

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20 years, she's seen in all the movies and

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you know, every other word. And I'm just

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wondering how do you feel about the modern usage of

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curtain of cursing words? You mean in America in

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the mass media? Yeah, Well I have a

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teenage daughter here, so she's gonna hear what I

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have to say. So I got to be careful

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about my answer. I mean we all know that

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these practices change over time and what's what's considered powerful

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and dangerous in one situation can seem harmless in another

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. Um, I don't have uh my first response

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is to to to wonder what's going on. I

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think one of the things that happens in the transition

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, broad transition, historic transition I'm talking about in

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the early modern period is that the focus seems to

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go quite a bit away from religious institutions and values

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, cursing God or cursing religious things, or cursing

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in the name of religion, and it tends to

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go toward uh the new uh focus of sanctity or

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or or authority or power, one of which is

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or taboo, one of which is sexuality. Um

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and so that's certainly something that others have said before

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me, and I'm interested in in looking at in

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describing these kinds of changes and processes and um before

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coming to conclusions about them. But there's I think

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there's also another problem that we have in our uh

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contemporary culture, and that is um a media driven

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uh market driven need for for a certain kind of

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novelty and shock. And one of the things that

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I think you see in the exaggerated and and excessive

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use of strong language is is just one more attempt

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to sell something or to grab attention and then become

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uh interesting for that reason. And it doesn't matter

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whether it's outrageous or or virtuous in that case,

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still shows that there's power. Yes. Yeah.

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Well that's right. Did you say this 17th century

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that this change occurs again? That's my yeah,

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that's where I charted. That's where I track the

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historians are going to Shakespeare wasn't here at the beginning

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of that's right. I remember looking up wounds and

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blood exactly is an abbreviation of God's wounds in God's

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blood. Yeah. How did that fit in?

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Well, I mean, there's a wonderful reading of

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Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt that I kind of share and

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it is that that Shakespeare is more of a display

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sir of religious power than a secularize er of it

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, that in other words, he of course Greenblatt

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sees a lot of catholic imagery in Shakespeare's plays and

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you know, Dante and purgatory and that kind of

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thing. Um So I think Shakespeare is very much

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tuned into the question of his day, which is

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can words hurt people? And he I give a

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number of examples in the in the chapter that deals

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with this uh in which Shakespeare seems to be interested

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in that very debate. So it's in that 17th

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century with Shakespeare near the beginning of it in England

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when all this stuff is going on, that the

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question of whether words can hurt people and whether words

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have power is a very lively topic of debate.

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and laws against profane cursing and swearing are very very

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prominent during that time. Uh this as well.

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So I think I think the 17th century is key

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and I think Shakespeare is a great way to open

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up that question. But yeah I see him as

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a display sir of and inheritor of uh some of

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those those vibrant ways that religion has power and he

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transforms that of course into aesthetic and literary power.

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Yeah. Was Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Yes

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, awkward silence. It's also true that we can

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00:25:07.230 --> 00:25:11.710 A:middle L:90%
have more informal I think more informal interaction and refreshments

409
00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:15.670 A:middle L:90%
um as well. I'm here for any questions or

410
00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:18.720 A:middle L:90%
discussion you'd like to have. Thanks a lot.