Alexander Samely

Link: Centre for Jewish Studies

Semester 2: Office Hours: Wednesdays 12–1 and Fridays 1.45–2.45 during teaching weeks; and by arrangement.

MA in Philosophy Frankfurt 1985, MSt in Jewish Studies in the Graeco-Roman Period Oxford 1984, DPhil Oriental Studies (Targums) Oxford 1989. I led a major AHRC project on the "Typology of Pseudepigraphic and Anonymous Jewish Literature c.200 BCE to 700 CE" between 2007 and 2012. It produced a new approach to the description of ancient Jewish literature, the so-called Manchester-Durham Inventory (literarydatabase.humanities.manchester.ac.uk). In 2024, my interest in text meaning led to a phenomenological study of reading as a contemporary activity, in the monograph Reading and Experience. A Philosophical Investigation (Contributions to Hermeneutics 13, Springer). My research also includes intercultural philosophizing.

• Literary structures in ancient Jewish literature, including biblical and talmudic literature - narrative, law and hermeneutics
• Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha of the Hebrew Bible
• The philosophical thought of Spinoza, Kant, Husserl, Rosenzweig, Levinas
• The Phenomenology of Reading and Theories of Text Meaning
• Hebrew Manuscripts

I am a co-editor of the monograph series Studia Judaica published by Walter de Gruyter/Brill (Berlin), together with Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford), Elisabeth Hollender (Frankfurt), Matthias Lehmann (Cologne), Günter Stemberger (Vienna, retired) and Michael Zank (Boston).

I convene the Manchester Phenomenology Reading Group (by zoom). In 2024/25 we meet to discuss Deleuze's Difference and Reptition.