2011-12 Research Associates
and Visiting Faculty
Rachel Adelman (MaTaN—The Sadie Rennert Institute for Torah Studies)
Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Hebrew Literature
The Female Ruse: Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible
A study of women's acts of deception in the Hebrew Bible as they are
sanctioned by God. Drawing on the insights of classic midrash,
feminist hermeneutics, and literary readings, the study traces the unique
role that women play in determining the heir to the covenant, the
monarchy, and the messianic line.
Azza Basarudin
(University of California, Los Angeles)
Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Islamic Studies
Gender Justice and Islamic Reformation in Malaysia
An exploration of the intimate lives and professional commitments of
Muslim women intellectual activists who are challenging institutionalized
religious authority to address gender injustice in Malaysia. The
study investigates their strategy of claiming rights, which combines
feminist/gender egalitarian hermeneutics, constitutional law, and human
rights principles to explicate the production and transmission of
religious knowledge rooted in equality and justice.
Julia Watts Belser (Missouri State University)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Jewish Ethics
Colorado Scholar
Fashioning Catastrophe: Talmudic Disaster Narratives & Feminist
Environmental Ethics
This project examines discourses of gender, class, and vulnerability
in disaster narratives from the Babylonian Talmud, analyzing how the
rabbis use women's wealth and desperate hunger to voice complex questions
about divine justice, innocent suffering, and the meaning of
catastrophe. Bringing rabbinic narratives into dialogue with
feminist environmental ethics, the project grapples with questions of
power and privilege in contemporary rhetoric surrounding natural disaster
and climate change.
Hauwa Ibrahim (Independent Scholar)
Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Islamic Law
Humanizing Shariah: A Memoir of the Human Face of a Legal Practice
This project will address the practical as well as theoretical
challenges of protecting women's rights under Shariah law as it is
practiced in Northern Nigeria. It recounts a life spent working
within the Islamic system and engaging the "fundamentalists" to
achieve justice when defending women sentenced to death, while maintaining
the highest global standard of rule of law and justice.
Michelle L. Wolfe (Ohio State University)
Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and History of
Christianity
The Gender Reformation: Clerical Marriage and Clerical Manhood
in Early Modern England
This project examines the shift from a celibate priesthood to a
married ministry in early modern England. It will study the
interaction of early modern religious authority with sexuality and
masculinity. And it will explore the role played by clerical wives
in the evolving identity and functions of England's Protestant clergy.
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