LTCO 214: The Bible and Critical Theory
Gender, Sexuality and Death in Biblical Literature:
Embodying Otherness in Ancient Jewish and Christian Communities
Dayna S. Kalleres
Office Lit building, 330
Email: dkalleres@ucsd.edu
Phone: 858 534-2279
Course Website: www.kalleres.com
Office Hours held at Café Roma
Class Time: Tuesdays 1-3:50pm
***Syllabus Subject to Change****
Course Description:
The bible (Tanakh and New Testament) provided the primary anchor for formulations of gender, sexuality and death in both Jewish and Christian communities in the ancient and late antique worlds. In this seminar we shall comparatively explore how the reading practices of ancient Jews and Christians cultivated distinctive, even polemical or subversive, conceptualizations of embodiment, which carved an often intentionally marginal religious identity in the ancient world. Topics include: circumcision, laws of purity, rites of passage, ‘the body of Christ’, incarnation, resurrection, martyrdom and holiness.
Required Texts: (Price Book Store)
Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (1995)
Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (2004)
Most of the readings will be available as pdf files posted on the course website (kalleres.com); those that are pdfs will be marked as such in the reading schedule. A few of the readings are only available via the reserve desk at the Geisel Library and are so marked in the reading schedule.
For those who do not own a bible, one is on reserve at the Geisel Library; also there is the online bible: www.devotions.net/bible/00bible.htm
The following books will also be on reserve at the Geisel Library
Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (1995)
Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories (2002)
C. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (1995)
Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (2004)
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective (1992)
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (1990)
Assignments:
In-class Presentation: 20%
Final Paper (15 pages): 80%
Helpful Guides:
Jewish History TimeLines: Example 1
Maps: Davidic Monarchy Map
Reading Schedule:
Week 1 (March 31): Introduction to Course and Syllabus
Week 2 (April 7): The Body in Antiquity
Primary Reading available on the course website: Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (selections); Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals (selections).
Secondary Reading: Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, "The Problem of the Body for the People of the Book," in People of the Body (1992), pp.17-46 (pdf).
Peter Brown, “Body and City” in Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988), pp. 5-32 (pdf).
Week 3 (April 14): Hebrew Bible—Adam and Eve
Primary Reading: Genesis 1-11.
Secondary Reading: Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 77-106 (on reserve at Geisel).
Week 4 (April 21): Hebrew Bible—Victims of Rape and Sacrifice.
Primary Reading: Gen. 19:1-11, 34; Deuteronomy 22.13-29; Judges 11, 19-21; 2Sam 3:7-11, 12-13, 16:15-22; 21:1-14.
***Apologies for the delay in posting this week’s reading: my scanner has been acting up recently.
Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible, pp. 102-98 (only on reserve @ Geisel).
Fontaine, ‘The Abusive Bible: On the Use of Feminist Method in Pastoral Context” in Brenner and Fontaine, eds., A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible, pp. 84-113(On Reserve at Geisel).
Week 5 (April 28): Rabbinics 1—Virgins, Wives & Bodily Purity.
For Context, Read Levitus 12-17, 18-20.
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, “Menstrual Blood, Semen, Discharge” in idem, The Savage in
Leslie Cook, "Body Language: Women's Rituals of Purification in the Bible and the
Mishnah," in Rahel Wasserfall (ed.) Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law, pp. 40-59 (pdf).
Daniel Boyarin, "Torah Study and the Making of Jewish Gender," Brenner & Fontaine, eds. Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible, pp. 515-46 (pdf).
David Biale, Blood and Belief: the Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians, pp. 9-43 (pdf).
Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender, Chapter 1 (pdf), Chapter 2 (pdf). notes--pdf
Week 6 (May 5): Rabbinics II—Male Sexuality & Circumcision
Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 107-66.
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, “The Fruitful Cut: Circumcision and Israel’s Symbolic
David Biale, "Does Blood Have Gender in Jewish Culture," in Gendering the Jewish
Andrew Jacobs, "Dialogic Differences: (De-)Judaizing Jesus' Circumcision," Journal of Early Christian Stutides 15 (2007): 291-335 (pdf).
Week 7 (May 12): Harlots, Seductresses & Heroes
A. Delilah and Cozbi
Primary Reading: Judges 13-16;(optional) compare Num. 22-24, 25, 31:1-18
Secondary Reading: Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, ch. 5 (pdf), notes for reading (pdf); Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible, pp. 74-88, 215-224 (only on reserve @ Geisel); Bellis, Helpmates, Harlots and Heroes, pp. 124-127 (pdf); Murphy, The Word According to Eve, pp. 109-123 (pdf).
B. Judith as Temptress Hero.
Primary Reading: Judith.
Secondary Reading: Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible pp. 339-349 (only on reserve @ Geisel); Bellis, Helpmates, Harlots and Heroes, pp. 217-223 (pdf see above in section A).
C. Jezebel
Primary Reading: 1Kings 16:29-33, 18-19, 21; 2 Kings 9-10.
Secondary Reading: Bellis, Helpmates, Harlots and Heroes, pp. 164-167 (pdf see above in section A); Bach (ed), Women in the Hebrew Bible, pp. 179-188 (pdf); Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible, pp. 209-214 (only on reserve @ Geisel).
Week 8 (May 26): Death and Suffering—Martyrdom and Crucifixion
*Notice a few substitutions
Primary Reading: 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42; compare 4 Maccabees 6-18. Jesus’ crucifixion (Mt 27; Mk 15; Lk 23). The Martyrdoms of Perpetua and Felicitas &The Martyrdom of Polycarp
Secondary Reading: Daniel Boyarin, “Whose Martyrdom is it Any Way” in Dying for God, pp. 91-126 (pdf).
Brent D. Shaw, "Body/Power/Identity: The Passion of the Martyrs," in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1996), pp. 269–312 (pdf).
Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, Columbia U Press, 2004, ch. 2 “Performing Persecution, Theorizing Martyrdom” (pdf), ch. 4 “Martyrdom and the Spectacle of Suffering” (pdf). Notes for both chapters (pdf)
Week 10 (June 2): Eroticizing Sainthood
Secondary Reading: V. Burrus, Sex Lives of the Saints, 19-33, 39-46, 49-59.
Secondary Reading: V. Burrus, Sex Lives of the Saints, 128-159