Great Books in the Early Biblical Tradition (Assistant Professor)

Description

The School of Civic Leadership at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, invites applications for full-time tenure-track faculty positions at the assistant professor level in the Great Books, with a field in the early biblical tradition. Successful candidates’ primary appointments will be in the School of Civic Leadership, with affiliations in the Thomas Jefferson Center. The possibility of partial appointments in the disciplinary department may also be explored. Appointments will begin in Fall 2027.

Successful candidates will combine teaching in the School’s discussion-based Great Books curriculum, centered on close reading of primary texts, with teaching in the University’s core curriculum. Courses are conducted as small seminars and discussion sections in which students engage directly with foundational, wisdom-seeking works in and between a range of disciplines: political thought, philosophy, literature, religious studies, history, and the liberal arts broadly. Instruction emphasizes careful textual analysis, sustained inquiry into enduring questions, and thoughtful conversation among students and faculty. 

The School of Civic Leadership is a new interdisciplinary school at UT Austin dedicated to preparing students for leadership in a free society. Its dual mission is to equip students with the knowledge and aptitudes necessary to lead the public and private institutions of a free society, and to produce academic research at the highest levels of scholarly excellence.

The School of Civic Leadership is expanding its major offerings. In addition to the Civics Honors major, in Fall 2027 the School is starting a Great Books major in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Center. It is developing a conceptually interdisciplinary PhD program in Civic Thought.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas, situated in the College of Liberal Arts, sustains the tradition of close reading of foundational texts through its Jefferson Scholars Program, its Core Texts and Ideas Certificate, and endeavors such as the Civic Thought Initiative. Its work is to help students become more reflective about their own beliefs, more capacious in their sympathies, and better prepared to engage in civil and respectful dialogue.

Qualifications
We seek outstanding candidates with a Ph.D. in a field related to the Great Books whose pedagogy and scholarship speak to the School of Civic Leadership’s core mission of educating citizens for freedom in its multiple senses: economic, political, and intellectual. We are especially interested in work on the books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament themselves, read closely and in their entirety as sources of wisdom about human nature, the family, law, and political community, together with the traditions of interpretation they generated from antiquity through the Middle Ages: the Jewish philosophical tradition from Philo through Saadia, Judah Halevi, and Maimonides; the classical Christian tradition of the Church Fathers; and the encounter of these traditions with Greek philosophy and with Islamic thought — each engaged on its own terms as an address to the whole of human life. We welcome work that ranges across the many forms these traditions have taken — law, narrative, poetry, prophecy, commentary, and philosophical and theological argument alike — and that draws on training in the relevant languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, or Arabic) and in the civilizations of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. More broadly, we are interested in work that inquires into expressions of Western civilization that have become central to the American civic experience: the roots of the West in Athens and Jerusalem; Roman law; American letters; works of literature, art, architecture, music, and science; reflections on politics and civic life; and moral reflection.

Ideal candidates will (1) demonstrate a commitment to the pedagogical idiom of discussion oriented toward clarifying fundamental questions, along with evidence of exceptional teaching, (2) have excellent records of scholarship with robust research agendas, (3) show a readiness to contribute to the intellectual life, governance, and programmatic development of the School of Civic Leadership and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas, and (4) show a readiness to teach in the University’s renewed core curriculum, focusing on the Great Questions of Human Life and inviting students into a deeper engagement in the pursuit of wisdom, and to build partnerships across the University, including with other relevant departments and programs.