Esther Brownsmith, PhD

@brownsmith.bsky.social

1875 Followers 330 Following

Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Dayton. Studying dead languages and living ideas. Interested in Hebrew Bible, gender, fanfic theory, and accessible, liberatory pedagogy. She/her.

“Hysteria” has long been a term that associates femaleness with disorder, and specifically emotional disorder. (Nor are these gendered associations limited to the past; consider the difference between a “seminal scholar” and a “hysterical scholar.”)
A crocheted blue beanie hat with white bunny ears, eyes, mouth, and two dangling paws/pompoms. It is a replica of the hat worn by Liam Ramos, a five-year-old taken by ICE.
A white woman with curly hair in a gray blazer holds up a pink book titled Unruly Books.
Transcription: How dare you have written about roses, When history burned like woods in summer heat? In today’s libraries the custodian dusts history volumes, And outside the window – returning with spring, Sappho sings a nightingale, How her heart dictates. Róże dla Safony (Roses for Sappho), By Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Trans. Aleksandra Gajowy
A 19th-century drawing of a woman sitting in an armchair and reading. Accompanying it is a poem by Esther Brownsmith: "What was it like to live in those times?", they will ask. Well, I will say, there was a lot of compulsively refreshing social media, a lot of bracing myself every time I pulled up the news, a lot of telling my friends that I loved them, because I couldn't tell them that things would be okay. And once, my therapist told me to take a spa day. So I sat in the hot water, and I tried not to think about Gaza or Ukraine or Roe or ICE or— and the water jets timed out. I looked down at my own body; I saw a diaphanous blanket of pinprick bubbles, each one clinging to a hair so faint and fine I'd forgotten they existed. A cocoon of air, stubbornly refusing to float from my skin. (The bubbles are not a metaphor for grace, or resilience, or hope. They simply startled me into seeing my flesh anew.) That is what it is like.
A blonde white woman says "We have the same bedazzled Bible!"
A "Fleabag" screencap that depicts a white brunette woman in the bathtub, reading a Bible. She looks aghast at the camera with a hand over her mouth.
An advertising banner for "The Trans Biblical Podcast Episode 2," featuring "Nonbinary Characters in the Bible: Mordecai" with Dr. Esther Brownsmith. The images include a picture of the book and of Dr. Brownsmith
Esther holds up a salmon-pink hardcover book titled “Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts,” edited by Esther Brownsmith, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and Marianne Bjelland Kartzow.
An excerpt of text reading, Neither interfaith dialogue nor biblical exegesis can succeed when entered into from a perspective of single-minded and unshakeable superiority. Only through the process of engaging with other people and other ideas, in a context where they feel safe to express those ideas, can new insights emerge. This process, which requires patience and humility in abundance, is neither straightforward nor predictable, but it recognizes a deep truth reflected in the etymology of “philology”: that love, a profound connection between multiple entities, lies at the heart of the philological pursuit.
The book cover, front and back, for "Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts," edited by Esther Brownsmith, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and Marianne Bjelland Kartzow
A crochet mandala in gold and navy yarn fastened to a black hoop.
A shiny brown ceramic bowl mended with gold.
A photo of a page of poetry that reads: fall apart. please just, fall apart. open your mouth. and hurt. hurt the size of everything it is — dam
Four small chocolate cakes on lacy white paper.
Realized metaphor in the Bible still “has not received the attention it deserves.” Not only does it represent a productive approach for analyzing narrative passages, it also offers the possibility of examining the power dynamics that lie below the surface of the text. Metaphors represent, reify, and reinforce existing beliefs in a society. They are intelligible because they draw on preexisting assumptions and widespread experiences, but they concretize those assumptions and experiences into the narrative text, forcing the reader to accept them (if only provisionally) to understand the text's rhetorical force. — Esther Brownsmith, “Metaphors Realized in Narrative: A New Direction for Biblical Metaphor,” Religion Compass, Oct. 2024
A screenshot of a Wiley editorial screen for an article titled "Metaphors Realized in Narrative: A New Direction for Biblical Metaphor," due to be published in Religion Compass.
A photo of two cake squares on a blue plate. The cakes are layered chocolate, topped with a fresh raspberry.
A page of text from an Introduction. It begins: “Unruly.” The word conjures images of rowdy students, of hair flying in every direction, of things that stubbornly refuse to submit to order. It is not a word that is ordinarily applied to staid, reliable books. But the books discussed in this volume are no ordinary books. Some of them do not exist in any extant form; we may not even know whether they ever existed. Others exist, but in unstable fashion, slippery zephyrs that resist a single form. Yet others are tainted by association: written by voices outside the mainstream, transformed by their links to marginal figures. They are, in short, unruly.
A monochrome letterblock print of two flowers with a quote in between. The quote says, “to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing — Raymond Williams.”
On the left, an oil painting depicts a beardless Black man in "oriental" clothing holding up a jeweled box. The right side is the following text: Eunuchs are precisely those who have a missing or defunct “hand”—specifically, a “hand” that is unable to procreate and produce offspring. This is no coincidence. Through its focus on the active hands of eunuchs, the book of Esther is making an argument about the royal world of its setting. ... In the book of Esther, power reproduces queerly, outside lines of biological lineage. —Esther Brownsmith, “Queer Futures and Phallic Humour in the Book of Esther” (access at bit.ly/jibs52)
A book cover by t&t clark. The title is "Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts," edited by Esther Brownsmith, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and Marianne Bjelland Kartzow. The color scheme is salmon, with an image of a palimpsest wall mural, with various ancient Christian images overlapping and fragmenting.
A monochrome tattoo of a five-pointed Mobius strip surrounding the Hebrew word “emet,” with leaves floating in a water surface in the background.
A cardboard box with bubble wrap surrounding books with a green patterned cover and the title "Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor," by Esther Brownsmith.
A poster advertising a hybrid book launch for "Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor," by Esther Brownsmith, on April 17 at 4:30pm EST. Zoom registration is at https://bit.ly/BrownsmithBookLaunch
A flyer advertising the class “Bible as Fan Fiction,” with Dr. Esther Brownsmith, taught in fall 2024.
A newspaper column in the Ideas & Voices section. The title is "Gender-affirming care bill based on unethical religious bias." The text of the article is online at https://www.daytondailynews.com/ideas-voices/voices-as-an-ohioan-and-a-christian-i-want-all-to-have-right-to-flourish-in-their-own-gender-identity/Z7CD3IBZCBABPDJBPW24PTVDCI/
On the right is a book cover titled "Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor." On the left is text: "Save the Date: Book Launch. April 14, 2024, 4:30pm EST. Dayton, OH and on Zoom. Featured Respondents: Meghan Henning (University of Dayton), Julianna Smith (Earlham College). Dr. Esther Brownsmith, University of Dayton, @brownsmith.bsky.social. https://bitly/devouringmetaphor"
A title page for “Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor, by Esther Brownsmith.
A circular portrait of a serene woman in sepia/gold, against a background of blue-black glass.
An ancient painting of an olive-skinned woman with large eyes, curly hair, and elaborate jewelry. She wears a red dress and holds an item that looks like a latte cup (perhaps a bottle?). Half her face is missing where the wood has broken off vertically.
A sleepy cat relaxes on a lacy crochet blanket while a white woman pets her.
Esther's Ephemeral Archive: Uneasy Memory in Esther 9 Jack Halberstam begins his book on the "queer art of failure" with a crucial tenet: "resist memorialization." Why? "Because memorialization has a tendency to tidy up disorderly histories" (Halberstam 2011, 15). The penultimate chapter of the book of Esther seems to exemplify this tendency. The book's convoluted plot, which hinged on the unexpected influence of the disempowered, has been tidied up into Mordecai's rise in power and the subsequent victory of the Jews over their enemies. Formal memorialization in the holiday of Purim is the result. Yet this simple summary glosses over the simultaneously talismanic and ephemeral role of writing in Esther 9. Over and over, the chapter stresses that its messages were written (כתב) in documents (סְפָרִים). At the same time, unlike the letter-heavy archive of Ezra-Nehemiah, the Hebrew book of Esther contains virtually none of the texts it cites. (See full text in SBL Program Book.)
EB: As I was writing part of this paper, I was sitting in an outdoor café, the morning sun warm on the back of my neck. A colleague working across the table asked if I could see my laptop screen well enough. I responded yes: “I’m reading by the shadow of my own head.” Then, a moment later, I added, “There’s a metaphor in that: I can only read through what my own body makes visible.”
A photo of a beige flowerpot with an orchid plant rising out of it. The pot is inscribed with lots of little wedges that look rather like cuneiform (albeit half of them upside down).
A picture of Hamilton, Eliza, and Angelica on stage, with the caption “take a break.”
A "motivational poster" saying "Optimism: Every day is a fresh start." The image shows Prometheus with his liver being eaten by an eagle.
4) Is there anything about you that I should know right away, such as a disability, preferred learning style, specific triggers, history of religious trauma, or other relevant personal history? (I will not share this with the class. If you are more comfortable waiting and discussing this in person, that’s fine too.)
A gray and white cat sprawls across a table, accompanied by a small purse and a blue crochet project in progress.
About AI: AI writing is a “brave new world” for all of us. In order for me to understand how it’s being used, this classroom has an AI full disclosure policy: at the end of any assignment where you used AI (ChatGPT, Grammarly, etc.), please tell me what you used it to do. You will not be penalized just for using AI. I simply want to understand where and how it’s helpful for students like you. • If your AI use appears to entail plagiarizing, I will contact you directly to talk about how to use AI in an acceptable way. You might have to redo the assignment in some cases, but you won’t be in trouble unless you repeat the behavior. • ChatGPT is a great resource for brainstorming ideas; I use it too! But it’s really bad at providing citations. Always check any quotations or citations against their original source. • If you are uncertain about whether a particular use of AI is acceptable, just ask me.