People

Michal Raucher an assistant professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. Her research lies at the intersection of Israel studies, Jewish ethics, and the anthropology of women in Judaism. As a Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Raucher conducted ethnographic research on reproductive ethics of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish women in Israel. She has been awarded grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation for anthropological research, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Crown Family Foundation. Drawing on this research, Michal will publish her first book, Birthing Ethics: Reproductive Ethics among Haredi Women in Jerusalem with Indiana University Press in 2020.

Professor Raucher’s second book is titled Tapping on the Stained Glass Ceiling: the Ordination of Orthodox Jewish Women in Israel and America. This book surrounds the recent ordination of women in Orthodoxy, comparing the phenomenon in Israel and America. Research for this book has been supported by the Israel Institute, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the American Academy of Religion, and the University of Cincinnati. Michal has also published on sexuality and gender in Judaism, religion and bioethics, abortion legislation in Israel, and female religious advisors on the Internet.

Dr. Raucher has been an assistant professor of Israel and Modern Jewish Thought in the Department of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, a fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center, and Yale University’s Center for Bioethics. She has consulted for the United Nations Population Fund, where she worked with colleagues from around the world on improving reproductive and sexual rights and health for women and children. Michal earned her PhD in Religious Studies with a concentration in religious ethics and anthropology from Northwestern University. She has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania in Bioethics, and graduated from the Joint Program with The Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, earning a BA in Hebrew Bible and a BA in Religion.

Read Michal’s FSR Blog posts.

Sharon Jacob is an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Pacific School of Religion. Sharon earned her Bachelors Degree in Accounting from Bangalore University and went on to earn her Masters of Divinity from Lancaster Theological Seminary and Masters of Sacred Theology from Yale University. She earned her Ph.D from Drew University. Her research interests include gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, race and whiteness theory, and postcolonial theory. Her publications include a monograph entitled, Reading Mary alongside Indian Surrogate Mothers: Violent Love, Oppressive Liberation, and Infancy Narratives. She has also co-authored an essay entitled, “Flowing from breast to breast: An Examination of Dis/placed Motherhood in Black and Indian West Nurses,” in Womanist Biblical Interpretations: Expanding the Discourses published by Society of Biblical Literature Press.Sharon has also published an article in the Bangalore Theological Forum titled, “Reading Mary Alongside Indian Surrogate Mothers.” Her forthcoming essay is titled “Brown Men Saving Brown Women from White Culture: Nationalization of Rape Culture and the Ecologies of Sexual Violence,” this essay will appear in the edited volume Entangled Differences published by the Pennsylvania State University Press. Some of the courses that she has taught include: Reading the New Testament Through the Eyes of the Margins, Revelation: Then and Now, and Interpreting the Bible through Movement.

Read Sharon’s FSR Blog posts.

Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder is an author, minister, and Bible and pop culture educator. She serves as Vice President of Academic Affairs/Academic Dean and Associate Professor New Testament Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary. Dr. Crowder earned a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in Speech Pathology/Audiology from Howard University; a Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary, and Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in Religion from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Crowder was a Fund for Theological Education Dissertation Fellow, Wabash Center for Teaching Fellow and Louisville Institute Summer Grant recipient. She has contributed to The Covenant Bible Study and Video Series and True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, and most recently Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology.

She served on the Editorial Boards of ON Scripture and Feasting on the Gospels and blogs for The Huffington Post and Inside in Higher Education. Her article on yoga can be found in the Disciples Women magazine. Dr. Crowder was a keynote speaker for the 2015 Festival of Faiths, 2017 Hampton University Ministers’ Conference and inducted in the Morehouse College Collegium of Scholars (2017). Her second book is When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood From a Womanist Perspective.

Dr. Crowder is married to Rev. Dr. William E. Crowder, Jr. They have two sons who keep this #SportsMomma and #WomanistMomma on the move. Learn more via @stepbcrowder (Twitter) or via www.drsbuckhanonc.com.

Read Stephanie’s FSR Blog posts.

Melissa Pagán is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Religious Studies at Mount Saint Mary’s University. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Society from Emory University, an MA in Bioethics, and an MA in Theology from Loyola Marymount University. Her research privileges feminist decolonial lenses to illuminate how the logics of the coloniality of gender manifest in Roman Catholic teachings on gender and sexuality and in the assumed human subject in Catholic Social Thought. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) and as a co-convener of the Latina/o Theology Consultation of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA).

Alison L. Joseph is an adjunct assistant professor of the Hebrew Bible and its Interpretation at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the assistant managing editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture. Her research explores the processes by which the Hebrew Bible was produced, bringing together historiographical, literary, and gender criticism as it illuminates the author/redactor’s role in interpreting and rewriting earlier texts. Her current project, Damning Dinah: The Priestly Battle against Intermarriage, looks at intermarriage and women’s sexuality in the Hebrew Bible and explores how late authorial voices reflect a growing concern with foreign infiltration. Her first book, Portrait of the Kings: The Davidic Prototype in Deuteronomistic Poetics, received the 2016 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She earned her PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Research Interests: Sexuality and gender in the Hebrew Bible, the Bible in pop culture, biblical historiography, feminist historiography.

Read Alison’s FSR Blog posts.

Maytha Alhassen is a journalist, poet and scholar. Her work bridges the worlds of social justice, academic research, media engagement and artistic expression. She recently defended and submitted her doctoral dissertation in American Studies and Ethnicity from University of Southern California (USC) and currently is a Senior Fellow at Pop Culture Collaborative.

Research Interests: cultural histories, social movements and friendships, race and ethnicity, social justice and the arts, travel, global flows, critical migration studies, women + gender, sacred femininities, media studies, Afro-Arab “solidarity politics,” Malcolm X, global south, food justice, and indigenous spiritual healing technologies and practices.

Megan Goodwin is a cultural theorist of American religious intolerance, focusing on race, gender/sexuality, language, and politics.  She is the Program Director for Sacred Writes: Public Scholarship on Religion, a Luce-funded project hosted by Northeastern University, and a visiting lecturer in Northeastern’s Department of Philosophy and Religion.

Yohana A. Junker, Ph.D., is Faculty Associate in Theology, Spirituality, and the Arts at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. Her ongoing research probes the salient intersections among the fields of art history, eco-criticism, decolonial studies and contemporary Indigenous aesthetics. She recently earned her doctorate in art and religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her dissertation entitled “Unsettling the Landscape: Appropriation, Representation, and Indigenous Aesthetics in the Land Art of the American Southwest” investigated how the Land Art movement of the American Southwest displays a colonial reminiscence and theological vibrancy while the Indigenous artistic production of North America encapsulates a decolonial poetics of resistance. A life-long Methodist, Dr. Junker was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and received her BA from Universidade Metodista de São Paulo. She holds an MTS from Christian Theological Seminary and, while at the GTU, she was awarded a presidential scholarship, a Louisville Institute Fellowship, and a Hispanic Theological Initiative Dissertation Scholarship. Junker has contributed chapters for the forthcoming volumes Sustainable Societies: Interreligious & Interdisciplinary Responses (Springer), Painted Portrayals: The Art of Characterizing Biblical Figures (SBL Press), and is co-editing, with Dr. Aaron Rosen, Modern and Contemporary Artists on Religion: A Global Sourcebook (Bloomsbury). In her writing, art, and activism, she investigates the ways artists create poetic spaces that allow viewers to come together, to reclaim agency, and to work collectively toward what Paulo Freire calls conscientização, which restores our sense of purpose, our thirst for justice, and our desire for transformation. Her artwork is central to her scholarship and activism, as demonstrated by her participation in two recent events, the “18th Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium: Political Theology at the Edge—Collectivities of Crisis and Possibility” and “On The Consequences of Hate Speech at the Manny Cantor Center in New York City.”

Midori E. Hartman has a PhD in Historical Studies: Christianity in Late Antiquity from Drew University (2019). Her primary research interests are Augustine, ancient slavery, and rhetoric as it intersects with issues of gender, ethnicity, and animality.