Julia
Watts
Belser
Research Topic
Nature, Sex, and Power in Rabbinic Tales of Noah and Sodom: Tracing the Afterlives of Cataclysm
Bio
Julia Watts Belser is an associate professor of Jewish studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. She specializes in the cultural study of rabbinic narrative, with a focus on gender, sexuality, disability, and ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity. Her work brings classical texts into conversation with queer feminist theory, disability studies theory, and eco-materialist thought. She also works in Jewish feminist ethics, with particular interests in environmental ethics, intersectional politics, disability justice, and disability arts as embodied ethics. An ordained rabbi, Belser writes queer feminist Jewish theology and brings disability culture into conversation with Jewish tradition.
Belser received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union, her MDiv from the Graduate Theological Union, and her MA from the Academy for Jewish Religion California.
Selected publications
- Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
- Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
