Melanie’s Life

Melanie described her academic life in this way, in an entry that she wrote for academia.edu:

I joined the Open University in 2007, having worked previously for Westminster College, Oxford (now Oxford Brookes University), the Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, and Girton College, Cambridge. My main field of interest is the interdisciplinary study of religion (especially, but not only, Judaism) and culture (particularly film). In my research and writing I draw on cultural theory, film studies, and religious studies; with each project, I seek to contribute to the definition and development of what remains a comparatively new area of academic inquiry.

On the last version of her Facebook page, Melanie described herself with a quote from Zora Neale Hurston, a woman whose writings she had studied for her doctorate and who was the focus of a substantial proportion of her first book, Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.

How can you describe a life? The bare facts are that Melanie was born to Mollie Wright on 12th October 1970 in Scunthorpe General Hospital. She was raised by her mother, her Aunt Nancy, and Uncle Bob (Mollie and Nancy were teachers and Bob a steelworker). Melanie attended Eastoft Church of England Primary School, North Axholme Comprehensive, Crowle, and John Leggott College, Scunthorpe, whilst all the time living in Crowle, North Lincolnshire. From her early teens she was, amongst other things, a keen cellist. It is important, in understanding Melanie, to know that friends from her childhood remained friends throughout her life and a very key part of who she was.

In 1989, Melanie obtained a place at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, to read Law. However, after a term she changed to Theology and Religious Studies under the guidance of her Director of Studies, Clare Drury, who, with her husband John, and Rabbi Nicholas de Lange, had a considerable impact upon her. She graduated in 1992 with a double first (a first in both parts of the Tripos - something very rarely achieved).

During her time in Cambridge she was instrumental in the early years of a society called Cambridge University Jews and Christians (CUJAC) — an organisation set up by students to counter the hostility that had arisen between Christian and Jewish students following a Christian mission aimed specifically at Jewish students in Cambridge. Other key members were Andrew White and George Wilkes. (In her final year as an undergraduate Melanie also met me, Justin Meggitt, then a first year postgraduate, and we were together from late 1991 until her death in January 2011). Melanie also identified herself as a Quaker in the last year of her time as an undergraduate, something that she remained throughout the rest of her life, though she always retained a respect for the Anglo-Catholic faith of her family and in which she had been raised.

Melanie then spent a year working in the learning resource centre of Cambridge Regional College in Cambridge whilst deciding whether to pursue further academic study. She did so in 1993, going to Christ Church, University of Oxford, to take a DPhil under the guidance of Christopher Rowland (the thesis was entitled — Moses redivivus: twentieth century America and the re-presentation of a biblical narrative). She was funded entirely by a British Academy scholarship. The thesis was examined in 1997 and a revised version of it, mentioned above, was published by Oxford University Press in 2003 (one of the examiners, Bill Telford, would remain a friend of Melanie's for the rest of her life). Melanie had to suspend her studies soon after her arrival in Oxford because her mother became very ill and died in November 1993. After nursing her mother, Melanie returned to Cambridge for a while before resuming her studies in Oxford. In 1994 Melanie took her first trip to Iceland and would return every year, at least once a year, for the rest of her life. It was somewhere where, she said, she felt most free and where the possibillities of life were, for her, at their clearest.

 As Melanie finished her doctoral studies she began to work for Westminster College, Oxford (which is now part of Oxford Brookes University), as a Distance Learning Tutor, writer and editor, with some sessional lecturing too in Biblical and Religious Studies. In 1998 she became an Associate Lecturer at the Open University in World Religions. In that year she also became Academic Director of a new educational charity that had begun in Cambridge called the Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations (CJCR). She remained working for CJCR until 2007.

 Melanie's work for CJCR was varied but the most significant elements were the creation of an MA in the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, that was taught from 1999 (an award of Anglia Ruskin University). The programme was innovative in being multidisciplinary and employing online learning from the outset, an area of pedagogical expertise that remained a key interest of hers. In 2006 she was instrumental in the development of a related award, the Master of Studies in the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, an award of the University of Cambridge. The students on both these awards meant a great deal to Melanie. Her attitude towards them is evident in the preface she wrote to a book she edited with Lucia Faltin, The Religious Roots of Contemporary European Identity (London: Continuum, 2007) where she dedicated the book to her students 'in anticipation of their future contributions' (p. xvi).

 Melanie was also a Research Associate the Centre for Advanced Theological and Religious Studies at the University of Cambridge from 2001-2004, working on the Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 - a volume in which she wrote over 50 entries, ranging from 'Religion and Film' to 'Marc Chagall' and 'George Eliot'. 

 In addition to her work at CJCR, Melanie regularly supervised undergraduates and graduates at the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge in a variety of areas within the Theology and Religious Studies Tripos but specialising, in particular, in modern Judaism and the Holocaust. From 2005 she was Lecturer and Assessor for the second year undergraduate course, ‘B14: The Life, Thought, and Worship of Modern Judaism’ and the first year paper ‘A7: Religions in Comparative Perspective’.

She also engaged in a considerable amount of writing, in her own time (Melanie never had research leave or a sabbatical in her academic career). In addition to a variety of articles and chapters in books, she wrote a very well received text book on modern Judaism, Understanding Judaism, Cambridge: Orchard Academic, 2003, and Religion and Film: An Introduction, London: IB Tauris, 2007. The latter work has proven to be a very influential book that demonstrated the need for those studying religion and film to draw upon cultural studies, religious studies and film studies rather than approaching film with assumptions drawn from Christian theology, an approach that had previously prevailed within the field.

In 2005 Melanie became Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies, Girton College, University of Cambridge, with responsibility for directing the studies of Girton students in Theology and Religious Studies, as well as having pastoral responsibility for a cohort of students from other disciplines within the College. She greatly enjoyed her time at Girton and was very appreciative of the professionalism and kindness of the colleagues there.

In 2007 Melanie obtained a post as Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, and though continuing to live in Cambridge, became one of the central academics at the Milton Keynes campus; key to both the teaching and strong research profile of that university. She thrived in an environment where Religious Studies was taken seriously and colleagues encouraged her innovative research. She was also immensely proud to work for an institution that has such an important and progressive role in higher education in the United Kingdom.

Melanie was employed at the Open University until she had to take medical retirement in the summer of 2009 following the recurrence of breast cancer, a disease for which she had initially been treated in 2004. During the period between her medical retirement and her death in January 2011, Melanie did many things but she also completed most of another, innovative work on modern Judaism, entitled Studying Judaism: the critical issues; a friend, Hannah Holtschneider kindly wrote the one remaining chapter, at Melanie's request.

There were many other things to Melanie than her academic work - politics, faith, film, design, Crowle, music, Iceland, sport, to name but a few. However, her teaching and writing, and the education that she received, were precious to her and central to who she was. The fact that she achieved so much in the face of so much, is a testimony to many things and many people but not least to her own remarkable creativity, intellect and determination.