TRS4112 Women in the Bible Syllabus

Syllabus: Women and Gender in the Bible and the Ancient World

Theology & Religious Studies, University of Glasgow Compiled by Dr Zanne Domoney-Lyttle & Dr Sarah Nicholson Short course description: This course will study in depth some of the narratives of female characters of the Bible, reading closely and considering a variety of perspectives, including historical, literary, theological and ideological approaches. Students will have the opportunity to engage in close reading of selected texts from different divisions of the Bible’ relate biblical texts to a variety of religious and secular contexts; discuss feminism and gender theory and their applications in biblical scholarship; becomes familiar with a range of theoretical interpretative approaches to texts. The course will explore intersections of gender, sex, race, ethnicity and class across the stories of women in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

Feminist Biblical Interpretation:

Adelman, Rachel. The Female Ruse: Women's Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015. Aschkenasy, Nehama. Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Bach, Alice and J. Cheryl Exum. Miriam’s Well: Stories about Women in the Bible. New York: Delacorte Press, 1991. Bach, Alice. Women, Seduction, and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Bach, Alice (ed). Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader. London: Routledge, 1999. Bachmann, Mercedes L. Garcia. Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History. Atlanta: SBL, 2013. Bal, Mieke. Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 1987. Berlis, Angela and Christiana de Groot, eds. Finding Themselves: Women and the Bible in the 19th Century. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming. Blyth, Caroline. Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction. London: T&T Clark, 2017. Blyth, Caroline, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards, eds. Rape Culture, Gender Violence and Religion: Biblical Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Blyth, Caroline, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards, eds. Rape Culture, Gender Violence and Religion: Christian Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Blyth, Caroline, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards, eds. Rape Culture, Gender Violence and Religion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Brenner-Idan, Athalya. The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative. London: Bloomsbury, 1985. Brenner, Athalya, has edited a range of “A Feminist Companion to the Bible” titles from Genesis to Daniel. See: University of Glasgow library for comprehensive list of books. Published by: Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Buckhanon Crowder, Stephanie. When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. Byron, Gay L. and Vanessa Lovelace. Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse. Atlanta: SBL, 2016. Calvert-Koyzis, Nancy and Heather Weir, eds. Breaking Boundaries: Female Biblical Interpreters who Challenged the Status Quo. London: T&T Clark, 2010. Cohn Eskenazi, Tamara and Andrea L. Weiss, eds. The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary.  New York: Urj Press, 2007. Corrington Streete, Gail. The Strange Woman: Power and Sex in the Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Darr, Katheryn Pfisterer. Far More Precious than Jewels: Perspectives on Biblical Women. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991. Day, Linda and Carolyn Pressler. Engaging the Bible in a Gendered World: An Introduction to Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. Day, Peggy L. (ed.) Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. de Groot, Christiana and Marion Ann Taylor, eds. Recovering Nineteenth Century Women Interpreters of the Bible. Atlanta: SBL, 2007. de-Whyte, Janice Pearl Ewurama. Wom(b)an: A Cultural-Narrative Reading of the Hebrew Bible. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Edwards, Katie. Admen and Eve: The Bible in Contemporary Advertising. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012. Exum, J. Cheryl. Tragedy and Biblical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Exum, J. Cheryl. Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives. 2^nd Edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Fischer, Irmtraud and Mercedes Navarro Puerto  (eds). The Bible and Women: An Encyclopedia of Exegesis and Cultural History: Torah. Atlanta: SBL, 2011. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of their Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Studies in Bible and Feminist Criticism. Philadelphia, PA: JPS, 2006. Fuchs, Esther. Feminist Theory and the Bible: Interrogating the Sources. London: Lexington, 2018. Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. Giles, Terry and William J. Doan. The Story of Naomi – The Book of Ruth: From Gender to Politics. Biblical Performance Criticism, 13. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016. Havea, Jione and Peter H. W. Lau, eds. Reading Ruth in Asia. International Voices in Biblical Studies. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015. Hylen, Susan E. A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Junior, Nyasha. An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015. Knust, Jennifer W. Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. Hertfordshire: Bravo, 2011. Koosed, Jennifer L. Gleaning Ruth: A Biblical Heroine and Her Afterlives. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. Koosed, Jennifer L. Reading the Bible as a Feminist. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Kraus, Helen. Gender Issues in Ancient and Reformation Translations of Genesis 1-4. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Levine, Amy-Jill, ed. A Feminist Companion to Mariology. London: T&T Clark, 2005. Logan, A. “Rehabilitating Jephthah”. Journal of Biblical Literature 128:4 (2009): 665-685. Maier, Christl M., and Nuria Calduch-Benages, eds. The Bible and Women: An Encyclopedia of Exegesis and Cultural History: The Writings and Later Wisdom Books. Atlanta: SBL, 2014. Meyers, Carol. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Morris, Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, eds. A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden. London: Continuum, 1992. Myers, Alicia D. Blessed among Women?: Mothers and Motherhood in the New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Økland, Jorunn. Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space. London: T&T Clark, 2004. Pardes, Ilana. Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1993. Runions, Erin. How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Runions, Erin. Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Sawyer, Deborah. God, Gender and the Bible. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Setzer, Claudia. “Slavery, Women’s Rights, and the Beginnings of Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, Postscripts 5 (2009): 145-169. Scholz, Susanne, ed. Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: Volume 3, Methods. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016. Scholz, Susanne. Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. Scholz, Susanne, ed. Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: Volume 1, Biblical Books. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2017. Scholz, Susanne. Introducing the Women’s Hebrew Bible: Feminism, Gender Justice and the Study of the Old Testament. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Schottroff, Luise and Marie-Theres Wacker, eds. Feminist biblical interpretation: a compendium of critical commentary on the books of the Bible and related literature.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012. Schottroff, Luise, Silvia Schroer, and Marie-Theres Wacker. Feminist interpretation: the Bible in women's perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation. London: SCM, 1993. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. New York: Orbis, 2001. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, ed. Feminist Biblical Studies in the 20th Century: Scholarship and Movement. Atlanta: SBL, 2014. Selvidge, Marla J. Selvidge. Notorious Voices: Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 1500-1920. London: SCM, 1996. Shepard Kraemer, Ross and Mary Rose D'Angelo, eds. Women and Christian Origins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Sherwood, Yvonne, and Anna Fisk eds. The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Southwood, Katherine E. Marriage by Capture in Judges 21: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Southwood, Katherine E., and Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor. Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2018. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman’s Bible, any edition, originally published in two parts in 1895 and 1898. Stiebert, Johanna. Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Stiebert, Johanna. First-Degree Incest and the Hebrew Bible: Sex in the Family. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2016. Teubal, Savina J. Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis. Ohio: Swallow Press Books, 1984. Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1984. Wetter, Anne-Mareike. “On Her Account”: Reconfiguring Israel in Ruth, Esther and Judith. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2015. Williams, Delores S. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. (Anniversary edition). New York: Orbis, 2013. Yee, Gale A. The Hebrew Bible: Feminist and Intersectional Perspectives. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018.  

Queer Bible/Theology

Althaus-Reid, Marcella.  The Queer God (God the Homosexual). London: Routledge, 2003. Cornwall, Susannah. Controversies in Queer Theology. London: SCM Press, 2011. Guest, Deryn. When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics. London: SCM Press, 2005. Guest, Deryn, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache eds. The Queer Bible Commentary. London: SCM Press, 2006. Guest, Deryn. Beyond Feminist Biblical Studies. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012. Hornsby, Teresa J. and Ken Stone, eds. Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarhip. Atlanta: SBL, 2011. Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Stone, Ken, ed. Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Stone, Ken. “Homosexuality and the Bible or Queer Reading? A Response to Martti Nissinen”. Theology and Sexuality 7 (2001): 107-118. Vasey, Michael. Strangers and Friends: A New Exploration of Homosexuality and the Bible. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995. Wilson, Nancy. Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible. San Francisco: Harper, 1995.  

Feminist Theology

Althaus-Reid, Marcella. Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics. London: Routledge, 2000. Althaus-Reid, Marcella. From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology. London: SCM Press, 2011. Althaus-Reid, Marcella and Lisa Isherwood. Trans/Formations: Controversies in Contextual Theology. London: SCM Press, 2009. Fisk, A. Sex, Sin and Our Selves: Encounters in Feminist Theology and Contemporary Women’s Literature. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014. Fuchs, Esther. Jewish Feminism: Framed and Reframed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Graham, Elaine. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press and Rutgers University Press, 2002. Isherwood, Lisa. Introducing Feminist Theology. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Lightsey, Pamela R. Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2015. Linden, R. Ruth. Making Stories, Making Selves: Feminist Reflections on the Holocaust (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1995. Llewellyn, Dawn. Reading, Feminism, and Spirituality: Troubling the Waves. London: Palgrave, 2015. Raphael, Melissa. The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust. London: Routledge, 2003. Vincent, Alana. “Seeking the Female Face of God: A Feminist Liturgical Reading of Melissa Raphael”. Holocaust Studies 15.3 (2011): 13-19. Walton, Heather. Imagining Theology: Women, Writing and God. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2007. Walton, Heather. Literature, Theology and Feminism (Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1978.  

Feminist Theory

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists. London: HarperCollins, 2014. Beard, Mary. Women & Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books, 2017. Beauvoir, Simon de. The Second Sex. (Newest Edition) London: Vintage Classics, 1997. Cixous, Hélène. Stigmata: Escaping Texts (Newest Edition) London: Routledge, 2005. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color”. Stanford Law Review 43:6 (1991): 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039. Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse (Newest Edition) New York: Basic Books, 2011. Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (Newest Edition) New York: Verso Books, 2015. French, Marilyn. The Women’s Room (Newest Edition) London: Virago, 1997. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique (Newest Edition) London: Penguin, 2010. Gay, Roxane. Bad Feminist. London: Corsair, 2014. Greer, Germaine Greer. Female Eunuch (Newest Edition) London: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 1987. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre (Newest Edition) London: Pluto Press, 2000. Hurley, Kameron. The Geek Feminist Revolution. New York: Tor Books, 2016. Irigaray, Luce.  The Sex Which is Not One. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. Johnston, Jill. Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution. London: Touchstone, 1973. Lerner, Gerda Hedwig. The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. London: Virago, 1977. Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. New York: Bravo Ltd, 1991. Solnit, Rebecca. Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays. London: Granta, 2014. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. London: Vintage, 1991. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. (Newest Edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.  

Gender Theory/Queer Theory

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". London: Routledge, 1993. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. London: Routledge, 2004. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1978. Elliot, Patricia and Katrina Roen. “Transgenderism and the Question of Embodiment: Promising Queer Politics?” GLQ 4:2 (1998): 231-261. Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. London: Duke University Press, 1998. Hornsby, Teresa J., and Deryn Guest (eds.). Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation. Atlanta: SBL, 2016. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” Signs 5:4 (1980): 631-660. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Sorkin Rabinowitz, Nancy, and Lisa Auanger. Among Women; From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. 2^nd Edition. London: Seal Press, 2016.  

Other Theory

Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life Foucault, Discipline and Punish Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (especially Body without Organs)