How Feminist Biblical Studies Can Contribute to Rethinking Health and Illness
Lecture Date: September 29, 2015
About the Speaker: Denise Buell is Cluett Professor of Religion and Dean of Faculty at Williams College. She has written two books, "Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity,” published in 2005, and “Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy,” published in 1999. This talk focuses on her current book project.
About the Talk: Buell draws from recent studies in microbiology and early Christian texts to offer contemporary ways of thinking about health and environmental responsibility. She suggests that current thinking about the human as a microbiome has early Christian antecedents. She uses the example of amulets worn for healing and protection to illustrate early Christians' relationships with the non-human environment and to demonstrate how the feminist perspective is changing what is relevant in the study of early Christian texts.
This lecture was co-sponsored with the Class of 1956 Chair in New Testament Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies.
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