ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow Gains Insight Through Experience as “Blind Scholar"
November 19, 2021
Carey Slaeker | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Eric J. Harvey MA’11, PhD’20 only became interested in studying the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East after finishing his undergraduate studies. “I was a psychology undergraduate, and in my final year of college I got really interested in linguistics,” he says. While perusing various graduate programs in linguistics departments, Harvey stumbled onto a website for a program in biblical and ancient Near Eastern languages that intrigued him. “I was fascinated by the idea of combining such a breadth of linguistic knowledge with historical and literary investigation, so I applied not really knowing where it would lead.”
So far, this decision has led to fascinating research, prestigious honors, and growing opportunities for Harvey. As a recent ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship recipient, Harvey recognizes that a crucial component in these outcomes has been the support and training he received during his time in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis. While Harvey had applied to other graduate schools, he ultimately went with Brandeis for its superb track record and supportive faculty. “I chose Brandeis because of its reputation for strong, historically-contextualized biblical studies and the interest of the faculty in comparative research of the Bible alongside the other societies of the ancient Near East,” he says. During his studies, he received tremendous support from then faculty members David Wright, Marc Brettler, and Tzvi Abusch who set powerful examples of scholarship while still allowing him to develop freely as a scholar.
Like other students pursuing their PhD degrees, Harvey’s experience was not without its difficulties. While working on an archaeological excavation in Ashkelon, Israel in 2012, he began to notice strange phenomena affecting his vision. After returning home, Harvey was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of related eye disorders causing progressive vision loss. His retinas had begun to deteriorate swiftly, and by 2014, Harvey had crossed the threshold into legal blindness.
“There’s a myth that disabled people who succeed do so because they have some special inner quality of determination or perseverance. In reality, most of the disabled people I know have determination and perseverance in spades, and it is the presence or absence of support structures that makes all the difference.”
Knowing that he would eventually lose his sight completely, Harvey began learning how to utilize new tools and systems of support. “There was a lot of work necessary to master old skills in new ways, such as reading Braille and using other kinds of assistive technology.” While some days were more difficult than others, Harvey found that the most important components of this transition were time and support. “There’s a myth that disabled people who succeed do so because they have some special inner quality of determination or perseverance. In reality, most of the disabled people I know have determination and perseverance in spades, and it is the presence or absence of support structures that makes all the difference.”
As his sight continued to deteriorate, Harvey found that his experience with blindness impacted his academic journey. While working on his dissertation, his study of the Hebrew Bible brought him into contact with some biblical texts associated with blindness in the history of interpretation, such as the iconic line, “They have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear.” From Harvey’s perspective, passages like these took on new meaning. “As I read through the secondary scholarship on these passages, I realized my experience and perspective gave me unique insights that I needed to add to the scholarly conversation.”
For his dissertation, Harvey examined the historical compilation of the biblical Psalms, challenging the perception of an unchanging collection of psalms throughout their history. Looking in particular at Psalms 113-118, a group known as the Egyptian Hallel Psalms, Harvey combined a literary analysis of this collection with a nearly comprehensive survey of Psalms manuscripts dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 18th century CE. “Basically, I showed that there was no period in which the idea of a single, static form of the Hebrew Psalter can be upheld on historical grounds,” Harvey says. “Rather, the text continued to shift and change as each generation received it from the last and passed it to the next.”
On these grounds, Harvey proposes a collective and multiform model for conceptualizing the Psalms. Using the biological analogy of a species, Harvey suggests that we think of the Psalms as “a class of individual specimens that are similar and related at the same time as they are diverse and variable.” He explains, “Just as no bluejay can exhibit all of the potential variations of the species, no individual Psalter can exhibit all of the variation found across the population of manuscripts.”
Harvey’s contribution to biblical scholarship has already begun attracting notice. Recently, Harvey received an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowship from the prestigious American Council of Learned Societies which placed him as the Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at Stanford University. “It’s an honor and an encouragement,” Harvey says. “It means that the ACLS and the people at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis see promise in my research and in my potential for a productive research career.” The fellowship will provide Harvey not only with the financial support and the time he needs as he works to convert his dissertation into a book, but also connects him with a solid network of engaged scholars. “I am now hooked into a strong research community at Stanford who have been very engaged and generous with their time and expertise,” Harvey says. “This community and the network of other ACLS fellows will be important colleagues and interlocutors moving forward.”
Currently, Harvey is busy turning his dissertation into a book, as well as working on several side projects “complicating simplistic portrayals of blindness and blind people in antiquity.” Yet, he still has time to provide advice to students considering pursuing graduate study in NEJS. “I think incoming graduate students need to start paying attention to the labor and professional aspects of academia far earlier than I did,” he says. “The academics can be all-consuming, but graduate students also need to be paying attention to labor conditions and the broader forces that continue to constrict the number of tenure-track and non-contingent appointments in the discipline.” However, the academics should not be overlooked. “I recommend students try their hand at publishing before they graduate. Not only does it look good on your CV, it gets you thinking about academic writing from a different direction (at least it has done that for me).”
To learn more about Harvey’s journey, visit www.BlindScholar.com.