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A.B. with honors, English and American Literature, Brown University
M.A./Ph.D., Religion, Claremont Graduate School
Elizabeth Castelli joined the Barnard Religion department, where she
is a specialist in biblical studies, early Christianity, and
feminist/gender studies in religion, in 1995. She also regularly teaches
courses in the College's department of Women's Studies. Since the fall
of 2004, she has been co-director (with Professor Tim Halpin-Healy in
the Physics department) of the College's Centennial Scholars Program.
She received the Gladys Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002.
Castelli's work in biblical studies draws upon contemporary literary
theory and cultural criticism, and currently she is especially
interested in the "afterlives" of biblical texts - how the Bible is
deployed and recycled in contemporary social, political, and cultural
expressions and debates. As part of her work in this area, she is the
editor of a new journal devoted to the analysis of "scriptures" and
their legacies in contemporary life: Postscripts: The Journal of
Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, published by Equinox
Publishing (UK). [Download Issue 1.1 (PDF, 3.3) and Issue 1.2 / 1.3 (PDF, 3.8) here.] She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Institute
for Signifying Scriptures at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont,
CA.
Castelli's research in early Christianity has focused on embodied
pieties, especially asceticism and martyrdom. Her most recent monograph
is Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, which
was published in September 2004 by Columbia University Press. Related to
this work, she is currently a member of the steering committee of the
Consultation on Violence and Representations of Violence among Jews and
Christians within the Society of Biblical Literature.
Her current research, which she undertook initially as Senior
Research Scholar at the Center for Religion and Media at New York
University during the 2003-2004 academic year, concerns U.S. Christian
identity politics and Christian internationalism, focused especially on
activism by American Christians on behalf of "the persecuted church"
around the globe. This project focuses on the impact of this activism on
U.S. foreign policy, human rights discourses, and first-world Christian
self-understanding (especially insofar as "persecution" functions as a
privileged marker of religious status). This work builds upon her
earlier work in Martyrdom and Memory, exploring the perduring
impact of the figure of "the martyr" on Christian culture across time.
The initial findings of the project on "the persecuted church" have
appeared in an article published in 2005 in a special, thematic issue of
The Journal of Human Rights devoted to the persecution of
Christians in the contemporary world and in a 2006 special issue of the
French journal, Vacarme, devoted to the theme, politique
nongouvernmentale. Castelli continues her involvement with the NYU
Center for Religion and Media as a working-group member ("Christianity
in Old and New Media," 2004-2005; "Sex, Secularism, and Other Religious
Matters," 2005-2006; and "Secularisms," 2006-2007) and as a member of
the Center's Advisory Board.
In addition to the NYU Center for Religion and Media research post,
Castelli has held several other research grants and fellowships. These
include a research fellowship at the Annenberg Research Institute (now
the Center for Judaic Studies at University of Pennsylvania); a
postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers
University; a research fellowship from the Henry Luce III Fund for
Distinguished Scholarship; collaborative research grants (on behalf of
the Bible and Culture Collective) from the American Academy of Religion;
an NEH Summer Seminar Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome; and,
most recently, a New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation in
Spring 2006.
Castelli is active in numerous professional organizations and
collaborations. She is a member of the
editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of
Religion and the Journal of Early Christian Studies. She also
edits a book series, RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUE, for Palgrave
Macmillan. In addition, she is a member of the Associates' Council of
the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown
University.
Before coming to Barnard, Castelli taught at Occidental College (Los
Angeles), the University of California at Berkeley, and the College of
Wooster (in Ohio). Prior to undertaking an academic career, Castelli
worked in feminist community organizing in Rhode Island, including
serving two years as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Council
on Domestic Violence, a coalition of the state's five shelters for
battered women.
Complete CV (PDF)
Courses
- Religion 3120: Introduction to the New Testament
- Religion 3140: Early Christianity
- Religion 3810: Millennium: Apocalypse and Utopia
- Religion 3840: Graeco-Roman Religion
- Religion 4110: Asceticism and the Rise of Christianity
- Religion 4120: Issues of Gender in Ancient and Medieval Christianity
- Religion 4160: Gnosis
- Religion 4824: Gender and Religion
- Women's Studies 1001: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
- Women's Studies 3111: Feminist Texts I: Wollstonecraft to Woolf
- Women's Studies 4300: Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies
- Women's Studies 6001: Theoretical Paradigms for Feminist Scholarship
Office Hours (Spring 2009)
Tuesdays 4-6, Wednesdays 11-12, and by appointment.
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