Harvard Divinity School’s Annette Yoshiko Reed Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Harvard Divinity School Professor Annette Yoshiko Reed, MTS ’99, has been awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most distinguished honors in the academic and creative arts. The fellowship recognizes Reed’s significant contributions to the study of ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish-Christian relations. 

Reed, who serves as the Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, is one of three Harvard affiliates selected this year as part of the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows. She is joined by Christopher Muller, Professor of Sociology, and Katarina Burin, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, who were recognized for their work in sociology and sculpture, respectively. 

“I feel lucky, grateful, and honored to have the support of both the Guggenheim Foundation and Harvard University,” Reed said. “These are two American institutions dedicated to protecting the freedom needed to make and keep knowledge—even in difficult times.” 

Reed will use the fellowship to complete a book project exploring the cultural power of forgetting within Judaism, as well as a related project on Christian erasures of Jews and Judaism as epistemicide.  

“Ours is a cultural moment that makes clear the vital importance of the Guggenheim Foundation’s commitment to supporting scholars and artists ‘under the freest possible conditions,’” Reed said.  

Reed’s research will contribute to the theorization of forgetting in memory studies and Jewish studies by exploring the loss of the ancient Jewish literary heritage that was recovered during the mid-twentieth century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

Reed joined the HDS faculty in July 2022, having taught previously at New York University as a professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity, with a special concern for bringing ancient examples to bear on the theorization of identity and difference.  

Reed’s books include Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge University Press), Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism (Fortress Press), and Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism (Cambridge University Press). 

“I owe to my time at HDS the inspiration to extend my project from its original Jewish Studies focus, also to include Christianity, supersessionism, and the ongoing challenges posed by the Christian erasure of Jews and Judaism,” Reed said. “In the latter, I follow in the footsteps of Krister Stendahl, whose chair I hold and who was also a Guggenheim Fellow. Thus, I am especially delighted to have my own project funded by a program that also supported his research twice, in 1959 and 1974.”