Video recording of Alexa Alice Joubin’s plenary is available on YouTube, https://youtu.be/8P5nNv86goQ There are certainly non-binary actors on stage, but are there Shakespearean characters who can be read as trans? The answer is yes. To ask whether there are transgender characters is to ask questions about the performance of gender roles. We are…[Read more]

This volume focuses on Pericles, Prince of Tyre, whose narrative of refugee suffering, familial loss, emotional distancing, people-trafficking, and eventual, joyous recovery speaks strikingly to our historical moment. The play’s internationalist reach, its images of cross-cultural relations, and its Eastern Mediterranean setting also promote a r…[Read more]

Does “authorship” still have a place in the study of the Hebrew Bible? Historical criticism has long sought to uncover the human authors behind the biblical texts. But how might the “death of the author,” so forcefully declared by Roland Barthes over fifty years ago, change the contours of this search? This volume brings together leading experts…[Read more]

This work provides new insights into the relationship between the Holiness legislation in Leviticus 17–26 and processes of cultic centralization in the Persian period. The author departs from the classical theory that Leviticus 17–26 merely presume, with minor modifications, a concept of centralization articulated in Deuteronomy. She shows how Lev…[Read more]

Early Jewish writings are replete with narratives of warfare and collective violence. Yet relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to how these accounts of violence affected the way Jews structured their festal calendar. This essay examines the festivals described in 1 and 2 Maccabees that serve to commemorate the most impressive m…[Read more]

This Open Access volume reveals how violent pasts were constructed by ancient Mediterranean societies, the ideologies they served, and the socio-political processes and institutions they facilitated. Combining case studies from Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, Israel/Judah, and Rome, it moves beyond essentialist dichotomies such as “victors” and “va…[Read more]

The emergence of Judaism and Samaritanism in antiquity is closely linked to the process by which the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) became defined as the Torah of Moses.

Against the background of the often female-focused view of sexual abuse victims, this paper addresses the issue of male-identifying victims of sexual violence through the lens of the Bible. I tackle one particular form of sexual abuse: female-on-male sexual violence, of the “forced/made to penetrate” type through a re-reading of Genesis 19:…[Read more]

The Baconian oeuvre remains the most extensive and influential assault on Aristotelianism in English writing of the early modern period. Where convention respected Aristotelian logic as a viable instrument for studying natural philosophy, Bacon instead sought to initiate an instauration, or restoration, of learning by proposing his inductive…[Read more]

This essay examines three cases in which pentateuchal ritual law is employed in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles: the Sukkôt celebration in Neh 8:13–18, Hezekiah’s Passover in 2 Chr 30, and Josiah’s Passover, in 2 Chr 35:1–19. These case studies reveal that the scribes responsible for Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles considered the ritual texts of the P…[Read more]

This article explores how the priestly wilderness shrine functions as a monumental space in the sanctuary construction account of Exod 25–31, 35–40. It draws on spatial theory and studies of monumental architecture to identify five features of the tent of meeting that infuse it with monumentality: first, its significance in negotiating the pat…[Read more]

Alexa Alice Joubin’s entry expands the global scope of The Chaucer Encyclopedia (4 vols). This entry, in Volume 3, examines the work by the Chinese translator Lin Shu’s (1852-1924). Lin translated and rewrote several key stories from the Canterbury Tales. Joubin argues that Lin’s works exemplify early twentieth-century Chinese imaginaries of medie…[Read more]

Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774), a Bolognese wax sculptor, overcame humble origins to become one of the most important anatomical artists of the eighteenth century. Working with her husband Giovanni Manzolini (c. 1700–1755), and continuing alone after his death, Morandi created remarkably lifelike and anatomically accurate wax models of the sen…[Read more]

This is a review essay, originally contributed to a blog symposium, responding to the publication of Philip G. Ziegler’s book entitled Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology.

What is the contribution of Psalm 45 within its canonical context? What is Psalm 45 doing in, and what is it doing for, the First Korahite Collection (Pss. 42–49)? These are the questions this article engages. In common with scholarship on the “shape and shaping” of the Psalter, the article seeks a form of coherency across the First Korahite Colle…[Read more]

Zimmermann, Ruben, and Zacharias Shoukry, “Creatio Continua in the Fourth Gospel: Motifs of Creation in John 5–6.” Pages 87–116 in Signs and Discourses in John 5 and 6. WUNT 463. Edited by Jörg Frey and Craig R. Koester. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021.

Alexa Alice Joubin received the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, which recognizes Professor Joubin’s “contributions to social justice and inclusive excellence ” that exemplify “the ideals that Dr. King espoused,” particularly “community-based social justice organizing rooted in non-violence.” The MLK Award comes on the heel of her bell hook…[Read more]

Criticism of the Shakespearean canon through adaptation as a genre has the capacity for liberation and social reparation. As a cluster of complex texts that sustains both past practices and contemporary interpretive conventions, Shakespeare provides fertile ground for training students to listen intently and compassionately to other individuals’ v…[Read more]

Stage and screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays raise ethical questions – that is, questions about how human beings should act and treat one another. In which contexts might cross-cultural enterprises be naturalising the values associated with Shakespeare to exploit unequal power relations among artists of different backgrounds? Con…[Read more]

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy creates a subtle apologia for the “middling sort” by challenging the socially constructed predicates of aristocratic privilege. A scrivener’s son, Kyd undertsood oeconomia, or household management, as both the means for material advancement among the “middling sort” and a potential threat to aristocratic insular…[Read more]