Elena Dugan is an Instructor in Philosophy and Religious Studies and a lifelong explorer of varioous religious texts. In her free time, Dugan works on cataloguing the Classics Collection, watches baseball, spends time with her kids, and takes voice lessons.
What was it like teaching classical mythology in a medium/maximum security prison?
One of the things that [the experience] really impressed upon me is how difficult the lives of my students and how rich their social worlds were, because so much of what we did was just talk. Being incarcerated takes so many things away from you, but one of the things that it doesn’t really take away from you is your ability to talk and be with other people who are inside. … That class is the inspiration for the class here we have on the books called ‘Crime, Punishment, and Justice,’ [PHR513} which is one of our electives in the department. There’s a direct line from that class to the class that we taught in East Jersey State Prison. The same texts that we covered are the texts that we cover here. We read texts like the
‘Oresteia,’ and then we read a play which was written by my students about what it’s like to be incarcerated, and inflected by classical myths.
How was your experience working in a salmon cannery between years in college?
It was so smelly. There’s a couple different sections of a salmon cannery. The highest classiest one is to work in the egg room which is to do fish roe and that’s where Drr [Austin] Washington got to work because he is classy. I am not. We did king salmon which are the biggest fish and so those have to be gutted too. I would do the head and gut line sometimes where you would gut the fish. Then they would be frozen whole and sent off to restaurants instead of grinding it up into cans. When they found out that I would do one year of college they made me do the computer. It’s really cool because there’s people with very interesting lives who decide that they would like to go to the middle of nowhere in Alaska to can fish for eight weeks. I met really fun people and truly lost my sense of self three weeks in.
What inspired you to pursue Religious Studies as a career?
When I went to college, I was pre-med, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be a doctor!’ Then I took a couple classes on religious studies. I took one intro to the Bible, and I said, ‘Well this is pretty great.’ Then I was supposed to do my biology requirements, and I kept just not doing them, so I got my degree in religious studies. I kept finding projects that really interested me in the world of religion and religious studies. When I went for my first masters, I thought that the Bible was very interesting. When I went for my second masters, I thought that the Ancient Mediterranean and the world of Islam was very interesting. I was doing a lot of Arabic at the time. I just kept coming up with new, different stuff.
Are there any specific texts that have interested you over the years?
I loved the stuff that didn’t make the cut in the Bible. I worked a lot on the Dead Sea Scrolls. [They] are a bunch of texts that were discovered in the Judean desert, which is somewhere in the Jordan, West Bank, Israel area today. I’ve always thought the people who have really extreme ideas are just the most fun to talk to and the most fun to listen to. A lot of the people who put together the Dead Sea Scrolls decided that they’d go live in the desert, they wouldn’t talk to anybody else, and they’d just hang out by themselves. I was like, “What a weird way to live your life. Tell me more about why you’re doing that.”
How and why did you learn 10 different languages in graduate school?
A lot of it was chasing down this book that didn’t make the cut in the Bible called the Book of Enoch. That book is a different version of the Book of Genesis. That story in particular was very valuable to Jews living in Judea and maybe Egypt around the 3rd century BCE. The place that we find it is in Ethiopia in the 14th century CE. I was like, “How did that happen?” I learned a bunch of languages. I learned Arabic, Classical Ethiopic, I learned Greek, I learned Syriac, all to try to say, “How are you people talking to each other, and how did these stories get from place A to place B?” I would hang out until I found something that needed a new language, and [then] I was like ‘I guess I have to learn another one.’ And then I learn[ed] a little bit, just enough to read it. Then you’re like, ‘Well that was okay, now I need to do another one,’ and then you go another way. When I was in graduate school, I learned ten different languages, but I learned them all a very minimal amount.
What was it like going to graduate school in Scotland?
My family is Scottish, so I went there as an undergraduate as an exchange student. Then I went back as a graduate student. I went on a Scottish heritage scholarship, because my grandmother is Scottish, and so there was a thing that sends people of Scottish heritage to go study at Scottish universities. It was so fun. I still do have a lot of friends there. When I was there I also worked as a bartender at a pub. Edinburgh is a beautiful old city. I thought it was very romantic. I read lots of Scottish books – I was very into that portion of it. But it was a big thing for me, [and] it was a big thing for my family. I’m very close with my grandmother. For me to be able to go back to her country, she was very excited about that.
You have written a book called “The Apocalypse of the Birds” – what is it about?
[It’s about an old story of] someone who thinks that the end of time is coming. They tell this weird “Animal Farm”-esque story, where they’re like “These people are the wolves, these people are the sheep, and these people are the pigs.” For a very long time people thought that this story came from a time in which Jews who were living in Judea were fighting with the Greeks. My argument is that that doesn’t make a ton of sense, and instead [the story] comes from an even more prominent time: when Jews were fighting with the Romans. The Romans would end up unfortunately kicking them all out of Jerusalem, killing many people, and doing what the Roman Empire did from time to time. That particular revolution is called the first Jewish Revolt and it happened in 70 CE, so my argument in the book is that this apocalypse is actually one of the only sources that we have from the people who actually led this revolution.
What drew you to Andover?
I love teaching about religion and the ancient world, and I really love doing it with people that are super keyed up and super happy to be here. One of the things that makes our classrooms so fun that you didn’t get when I was teaching in college…[is that] when people know each other they just talk in a more interesting way… Every classroom is [made up of] enemies, frenemies, best friends forever, people who are in a lacrosse rivalry, and then it just makes everything so rich and so fun. Religion is the most interesting thing that humans have ever come up with. Every single weird idea and every single fun idea that humans have ever come up with, they just stick it in religion. To take all of humanity’s most extreme ideas and talk about them with a bunch of people who are friends and frenemies is so fun.
What is your Baseball and Philosophy (PHR541) class like?
I’ve been obsessed with baseball my whole life. One of the things that I have always really loved about baseball is that it has a really dense, confusing social world. A big part of Baseball and Philosophy is about baseball’s unwritten rules, which are the things that you really should know, but you don’t and they won’t tell you, because you should just know it. I’ve always thought that that was just such a strange and wonderful thing about the world of baseball. Plus, baseball is the backbone of what an American sport looks like. When America was reckoning with the way that they thought about race in the 40s and 50s, baseball was right there at the front line. When women were starting to step out of quote-on-quote ‘the home’ into different arenas of life, baseball was right there with them. Baseball maps a lot of what happens just in American history. It [also] has this super peculiar, strange world of how much cheating is okay, because actually a little bit of cheating is okay. How much revenge should you take, because a little bit of revenge is okay, but not a lot of revenge. When do you get to throw pitches at people’s heads? The answer is basically never. But when do you get to throw a pitch at someone’s butt?
Why do you think it’s important for students to study religion?
It’s not all going to suit you and it’s not all even going to make sense to you, but religion is just a record of the extent of what humans can think. Sometimes it’s really cool and you’re like, ‘Wow.’ Sometimes it’s really bad, and you’re like, ‘Why did you do that?’ [Religion] motivates people to do things that are so beautiful, and so ugly, and so all over the place. Religion is one of these completely unique aspects of human life that’s worth taking a look [at]. Even if it’s not your jam [or] even if you don’t think you’re religious, it’s just a record of people being like, ‘This is what it is to be human and I’m going to push it all the way to the limits.’
