Esther Brownsmith, PhD
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brownsmith.bsky.social
Esther Brownsmith, PhD
@brownsmith.bsky.social
1.8K followers 330 following 250 posts
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.
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brownsmith.bsky.social
I am beyond excited to share that I am receiving this year’s Brooten Award from the Society of Biblical Literature for my paper, “The Monster at the End of This Essay: Incestuous Whores, Trans Monstrosity, and Genesis 38.” www.sbl-site.org/news/announc...
October 20, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
jonathancohn.bsky.social
If you think antifascists are bad, it just might be because you’re a fascist
premthakker.bsky.social Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · Sep 22
New Executive Order just dropped
Presidential Actions DESIGNATING ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION Executive Orders September 22, 2025
September 22, 2025 at 11:57 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
A man who ruled an empire of hate died today. He once said that empathy was “a made-up, New Age term” that “does a lot of damage.” (1/2)
September 10, 2025 at 10:42 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
The new issue of Religious Studies Review is live, featuring responses to Lee Edelman and the Queer Study of Religion that include my own essay, "'She Laughs at the Future' (Prov. 31:24b): Reading Sarah's Queer Jouissance." It's available open access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
“She Laughs at the Future” (Prov. 31:24b): Reading Sarah's Queer Jouissance
Click on the article title to read more.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 4, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
katz.theracket.news
A 1955 writer casually dropping a “Germans tended to go along with Nazis just like your all-American wife goes along with segregation” is both the answer and the question for “how we got here”
katz.theracket.news Jonathan M. Katz @katz.theracket.news · Aug 27
Hell of a passage to read in twenty twenty five
to Chicago or vice versa, the locat and, by transference, the community, too. The German community-the rest of the seventy million Germans, apart from the million or so who operated the whole machinery of Nazism-had nothing to do except not to interfere. Absolutely nothing was expected of them except to go on as they had, paying their taxes, reading their local paper, and listening to the radio. Everybody attended local celebrations of national occasions-hadn't the schools and the stores always been closed for the Kaiser's birthday?—so you attended, too. Everybody contributed money and time to worthy purposes, so you did, too. In America your wife collects or distributes clothing, gives an afternoon a week to the Red Cross or the orphanage or the hospital; in Germany she did the same thing in the Nazi Frauenbund, and for the same reasons. The Frauen-bund, like the Red Cross, was patriotic and humanitarian; 57 The Lives Men Lead did your wife ask the Red Cross if "Negro" plasma was segregated from "white"? One minded one's own business in Germany, with or without a dictatorship. The random leisure which leads Americans into all sorts of afterhour byways, constructive, amusing, or ruinous, did not exist for most Germans. One didn't go out of one's way, on a day off, to "look for trouble" thoro loon ta
August 27, 2025 at 3:02 AM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Hey everyone, my interview with @gregsoden.bsky.social is live on the Classical Ideas Podcast! Listen up for discussion about my biblical studies journey, nonbinary readings of the Bible, and my exciting upcoming project on biblical killjoys. classicalideaspodcast.libsyn.com/ep-332-nonbi...
The Classical Ideas Podcast: EP 332: Nonbinary Biblical Readings of Mordecai and Beyond w/Dr. Esther Brownsmith
Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), ...
classicalideaspodcast.libsyn.com
August 21, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
kevinsolez.bsky.social
Cool stuff!
 Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · Aug 1
It's out, and now free to download for the next 2 weeks!
Go give my new book a read (it's short enough to finish in a sitting) and then share it far and wide to your friends who live for the connections between myth, ritual, and economics (all of them)!
Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel
Cambridge Core - Archaeology: General Interest - Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel
www.cambridge.org
August 4, 2025 at 12:50 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
On the one hand: I do not need to be writing a new article. Also, am not Assyriologist.

On the other hand: I found an Akkadian passage that offers a fascinating new possibility for the Sotah laws of Numbers 5.

Ugh, decisions.
July 11, 2025 at 3:35 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
This stanza from a 1937 Polish poem really spoke to me in these times.
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
June 13, 2025 at 4:07 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
So honored that the inimitable @qgpennyworth.com used a poem that I wrote as part of a mini-zine/pop card! Check it out and share it if you like.
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.
June 12, 2025 at 12:30 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Is the Bible fan fiction? A thread. 📜 ​​
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.
June 3, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
hadassahbrandeis.bsky.social
Congratulations to Esther Brownsmith @brownsmith.bsky.social, Ph.D., 2020 HBI Scholar in Residence & @universityofdayton.bsky.social Asst. Prof., on the publication of GENDERED VIOLENCE IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVE, THE DEVOURING METAPHOR, now available in Open Access. 1/
www.routledge.com/Gendered-Vio...
Book cover with text Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative, The Devouring Metaphor, Esther Brownsmith
June 2, 2025 at 6:05 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
I know that celebrating anything these days seems tone deaf. I know. But: if you've been waiting to read my book, I am so pleased to share that it is now officially available free to read in Open Access. So check it out and share widely! bit.ly/thedevouringmetaphor
April 16, 2025 at 11:54 AM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Check out the Trans Biblical Podcast for a new episode where I talk about my work on Mordecai as a non-binary character, and why this kind of biblical work is so necessary these days.

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7qU3...

Youtube: youtu.be/SA9k-T-LvOA
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
April 14, 2025 at 2:51 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Check out the new Bible & Critical Theory! In addition to several exciting articles, there is a generous book review of my monograph by @alexianafry.bsky.social and my review of @tdbiii.bsky.social's wonderful book on fanfic and early Christianity. bibleandcriticaltheory.com/issues/volum...
VOLUME 20, NO. 2 (2024)
bibleandcriticaltheory.com
March 7, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
generalstrikeus.bsky.social
We’re partnering w/ a number of groups participating in an #economicblackout THIS Friday, 2/28.

Do not spend, if possible.
No Starbucks on your way to work.
No drinks w/ the coworkers after work.
No dining out.
No Walmart run.
No quick McDonald’s drive-thru hit.

Hurt their wallets!
Poster highlighting the economic blackout (no spend day) on Friday, February 28th.
February 25, 2025 at 2:49 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
I preached yesterday. It was not easy to know what to tell people in these times. Here is the transcript. medium.com/@esther.brow...
Waiting for Laundry, Waiting for Spring, Waiting for God
(A sermon delivered at Christ Episcopal Church Dayton on February 2, 2025. The lectionary readings for the day are here.)
medium.com
February 3, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
teamufyh.bsky.social
Panic and despair without an outlet can be self-destructive. Interrupt the doom spiral:

-Do 1 self-indulgent thing that makes you feel happy or content.
-Do 1 thing to make your home environment more calm or comfortable.
-Do 1 thing to help your community and people in it.

Repeat as needed.
February 2, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Esther Brownsmith, PhD
antheabutler.bsky.social
Folks, if you don't have a plan, now is the time to get one.
February 2, 2025 at 1:57 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
It’s all shiny and real now!
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.
January 30, 2025 at 8:35 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Our article about reading scripture as an interfaith group is out in Crosscultural Studies of Religion and Theology! Check out the whole issue to get a glimpse of what our Jewish-Christian Young Scholars Network has been doing. eplus.uni-salzburg.at/csrt/periodi...
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.
January 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Today marks the publication of Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts, edited by myself, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and Marianne Bjelland Kartzow! We delve into "unruly books" of antiquity and what they tell us about how people have understood books—then and now.
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
January 23, 2025 at 3:19 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
Bishop Budde's sermon is SO GOOD that it nearly brought me to tears. If you've only been encountering it in sound bites, I encourage you to listen through all fifteen minutes of it. This is true prophecy.

Listen/watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwa...

Read: www.wral.com/story/bishop...
January 22, 2025 at 10:49 PM
brownsmith.bsky.social
In my writing group today, I realized that there isn't a good antonym for "gaslighting." So I created one: "incandescing." We incandesce any time that we mutually affirm our reality, giving voice to our personal experiences, even and especially when they're uncomfortable, unhappy, or unpopular. 1/2
January 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM