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Book Review: Matthew 8–20: A Commentary

HENS-PIAZZA SURVEYS THE terrain of New Historicism, looking for passage across the "sharply drawn border that currently separates historical studies from literary studies in the biblical field" (p. 2; cf. pp. 18-19). New Historicism, as she introduces it, names not a methodology but a literary-critical sensibility formed by certain enabling assumptions. Textual production and interpretation are both intertwined with other material practices in ways that call into question familiar distinctions between text and context, literature and history, and even past and present (pp. 6-7). Hens-Piazza briefly details New Histoncism's theoretical diet—Marx, Foucault, feminism, and Geertz, to name only the main courses—and situates its emergence in literary studies and its appeal for biblical studies in terms of key shifts in political and academic institutions. Two central chapters draw out New Histoncism's difference from conventional historicism and pinpoint "recurring characteristics" (p. 37) that demarcate New Histoncist writing. Hens-Piazza offers three brief examples of New Histoncists in action before concluding with a positive assessment of New Histoncism's future in biblical studies. Hens-Piazza remains faithful to reservations about fixed definitions and set methodologies. She draws a broad map of New Histoncism's heterogeneous theoretical landscape, zeroing in on its preoccupation with ideology, power, resistance, margins, and struggle. Yet without even a minimal methodological key to this map, newcomers to New Historicism are forced to rely upon the illustrations provided for them. However, Hens-Piazza's summaries of New Histoncist readings—as opposed to live textual encounters—fall a bit short as the needed trailmarkers. To track the interpretive steps of a New Histoncist beast more closely, readers will want to seek out more direct examples. Nevertheless, Hens-Piazza has prepared a clearly written and helpful guide to reading in a New Histoncist mode.