Students and scholars of the Christian Apocrypha are encouraged to become members of a new scholarly association: the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL). The association made its formal debut in an announcement at the conclusion of the 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium on September 26, 2015.
NASSCAL is a North American counterpart to l’AELAC (l’Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne), the French/Swiss group of scholars responsible for the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum and other publishing endeavors. The goals of NASSCAL over the next few years are to establish a membership base and promote collaboration among members in several endeavors, including a comprehensive online bibliography/clavis and an open-access journal. The association plans also a series of bi-annual meetings in alternating locations between the U.S. and Canada. These meetings replace the York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series, convened in 2011, 2013, and 2015. The first NASSCAL meeting is planned for Ottawa in 2017.
The creation of NASSCAL goes back to the concluding session of the 2011 York Symposium, when those in attendance discussed the possibility of establishing an association. Soon after, a founding board was formed and members of this board met at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2014 to consider the group’s mandate. In the subsequent months, an executive was elected from among the board and a web site (NASSCAL.com) created to promote the group and to build its membership.
The NASSCAL executive comprises Tony Burke (President), Janet Spittler (Vice-President), Brent Landau (Communications Officer), and Bradley Rice (Student Member). The members-at-large are Charles Hedrick, Cornelia Horn, F. Stanley Jones, Stephen Patterson, Pierluigi Piovanelli, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jean-Michel Roessli, and Stephen Shoemaker.
To become a member of NASSCAL, register directly at the association’s web site. There are no membership fees. For addition information about NASSCAL, visit the web site and seek out the “Contact Us” link.
