People

2009-10 Research Associates and Visiting Faculty

Tania Oldenhage

Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Theology

Tania Oldenhage is a New Testament scholar who has been working in Switzerland for the past six years. As director of theological studies at the Protestant Academy of Boldern, she has offered advanced courses in feminist theology with a special emphasis on feminist New Testament studies. At Boldern, she cofounded and spearheaded the Network for Gender-Conscious Theology (NGT), which brings together theologians from different countries who work on the intersection of religion, body, and gender. Oldenhage has been a member of the academic team of the European Project of Interreligious Learning 2007-09 (EPIL) and a member of the board of the Society of Feminist Theologians in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. She serves on the editorial board of FAMA, a Swiss journal of feminist theology.

Oldenhage received her doctorate from Temple University, where she also earned a graduate certificate in women's studies. Prior to her move to Switzerland, she taught for several years as an assistant professor of religion at Mount Union College within the areas of biblical studies and early Christianity. She is the author of the book Parables for Our Time: Rereading New Testament Scholarship after the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2002) and has published a wide range of articles and essays on biblical hermeneutics.

Oldenhage is currently working at the University of Basel on a post-Holocaust hermeneutic of the passion narratives. The research she will pursue at Harvard Divinity School explores crucial gender dimensions of this work. Her project offers a critical reading of birth imagery in the passion narratives with a special emphasis on the "blessing of the barren" in the Gospel of Luke.

Photograph courtesy Tania Oldenhage.