Caryn Tamber-Rosenau

Assistant Professor
Jewish Studies
Email: cmtamber@central.uh.edu
View CV

Biography

Caryn Tamber-Rosenau's scholarly interests include women in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature, early Jewish biblical interpretation and feminist and queer criticism of the Bible. She directs the Jewish Studies program and is also affiliated with the Religious Studies program in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. She serves as book review editor of The Bible & Critical Theory, serves on the steering committee of the LGBTI/Queer Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa. She was proud to win the Lence Award for teaching in the Humanities in 2019.

Education

Ph.D., Religion (Hebrew Bible/Ancient Israel; graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies), Vanderbilt University, 2015
M.A., Jewish Studies (Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Civilization), Towson Unversity/Baltimore Hebrew Institute, 2010
B.A., (magna cum laude) Communications (minor in Women's Studies), University of Pennsylvania, 2003

Research interests

Second Temple Judaism; women and gender in the Hebrew Bible and postbiblical literature; feminist/queer readings of the Bible; Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; early Jewish interpretations of Scripture

Selected publications

Women in Drag: Gender and Performance in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Literature, Biblical Intersections series, Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2018.

In preparation: Queering History in Second Temple Jewish Literature. Under contract with Oxford University Press.

“Esther and Agency: Gender, Ethnicity, and Power in the Book of Esther,” Hebrew Studies 63 (2022): 99-118.

“The Goddess in the Exodus: Nina Paley’s Seder-Masochism and Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 38 (2022): 111-130.

“Contributing Voice,” in Judith (Wisdom Commentary Series), Jennifer L. Koosed and Robert Seesengood, Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2022.

“No Future for Bethulia? Judith and Queer Time.”  Biblical Interpretation 28 (2020): 451-465.

“A Queer Critique of Looking for ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Voices,” in The Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (ed. Susanne Scholz), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

“Beyond Judeo-Christian,” in The Social Studies Texan 36 (2020): 59-62.

“Biblical Bathing Beauties and the Manipulation of the Male Gaze: What Judith Can Tell Us about Bathsheba and Susanna,”  Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2017): 55-72.

“The ‘Mothers’ Who Were Not: Motherhood Imagery and Childless Women Warriors in Early Jewish Literature,” in Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (ed. Jane Kanarek, Marjorie Lehman, and Simon J. Bronner), Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2017.

“Female Diplomats in Jewish Elephantine? A New Look at a Papyrus from the Yedaniah Archive.”  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 40 (2016): 491-510.

Courses

• RELS 2310: Bible and Western Culture I
• WCL/JWST 2380/RELS 2336: Introduction to Jewish Studies
• RELS/JWST 2372: The Bible and Modern Pop Culture
• WCL 3355: Goddesses and Other Divine Women
• RELS/JWST 3371: Women in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
• RELS/JWST 3373: Jews in the Ancient World