AT ATTR’s summer seminar, or “summer school,” June 4-8, it is the central and much debated questions of “Authorship and Intention” that are in focus. Authorship and intention are central topics to textual scholarship, and PhD students from the Humanities, Law, and Theology are invited to relate these themes to their own work at the upcoming seminar.
- We will explore the role of authorship and intention from a wide range of perspectives, Lundhaug explains. By way of example he mentions a number of key questions: How does knowledge of authors and their intentions affect the interpretation of the texts we study? What is the significance of the intentionality of a text or its author? And is the author’s intention even a valid concern in textual studies?
To shed light on these questions, Lundhaug has invited scholars from a variety of fields, including literary theory, religious studies, and law, to lecture on the basis of their own research and showcase state-of-the-art approaches to these questions. The lectures will deal with such varied topics as author museums and genetic manuscript studies, probability designs, legislative intent, epistemology and ethics, applied to both historical and contemporary textual materials.
Analytical Skills Through Interdisciplinary Exposure
One of ATTR's main educational goals is to help PhD students to develop their analytical skills by opening their minds to a wide variety of theoretical and metodological approaches to textual scholarship, explains Hugo Lundhaug, professor of Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature at the Faculty of Theology. Lundhaug is the Scientific Director of the ATTR Research School, and thus responsible for bringing together scholars from the Humanities, Theology, and Law at ATTR’s seminars.
- The radically interdisciplinary nature of ATTR’s seminars is intended to make sure that PhD students from all participating fields are confronted with new and unexpected perspectives.
- By being exposed to a broad variety of methodological approaches, researchers may not only pick up ideas they can apply in their own work, but their own ways of working also become clearer, helping them discover strengths and weaknesses that that they may have been unaware of, says Lundhaug.
- ATTR’s seminars therefore aim to provide participants with insights into a wide range of different methodological approaches both through lectures and by sharing and discussing their ongoing dissertation work with each other.
Interesting Insights on my Project
Roxana Sarion, PhD at UiT - The Artic University of Norway, joined the ATTR Summer School last year. We asked her what she found to be of particular importance to her and her thesis.
- First, I value both the academic and human approach in organising the summer school, she says.
Sarion explains that she found the interdisciplinary approach very rewarding:
- I particularly liked the idea of meeting other PhD researchers from different universities (in and outside Norway) and with different academic backgrounds than mine who provided me with interesting insights on my project.
She adds that she also appreciated the academic skills sessions and the focus on networking that ATTR has:
- I also liked very much the fact that the atmosphere was embracing and that you sought to supply us with tools to develop our professional persona in order to extend our job opportunities in and outside the academic research field.
An International Network of PhD Students
In addition to broadening the participating PhD students’ theoretical and methodological perspectives, ATTR also crucially aims to broaden and strengthen their scholarly networks, heighten the quality of their analyses, and prepare them for life after their dissertations have been submitted and defended. The summer school is intended for all PhD students working with authoritative texts, whether the texts they focus on are law texts, literary texts, religious texts, or other kinds of text that can be regarded in some way as having been bestowed with authority.
- All PhD students who have been admitted into a PhD program are eligible to apply, says Leonora Onarheim Bergsjø, the head administrator of ATTR.
PhD students at one of the partner institutions of ATTR may apply for ATTR Membership, which enables them to participate in seminars and to apply for mobility grants. The partner institutions are the Universities of Oslo (UiO), Bergen (UiB), Tromsø (UiT), MF Norwegian School of Theology, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
In addition, Bergsjø also encourages PhD students from international top-level universities to apply for participation in the seminars.
- We always reserve a few places for international PhD students, in order to create a broad and international scholarly network for the participants. Hopefully, long-lasting scholarly friendships may thus arise across national and disciplinary boundaries.