Department of Religious Studies

Ellen Haskell, Assistant Professor

Ph.D. History of Judaism, University of Chicago Divinity School, 2005

edhaskel@uncg.edu

Areas of Academic Interest

• Jewish Thought and Jewish Literature
• Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah
• Rabbinic Literature
• Theories of metaphor
• The role of imagery in religious thought
• Gender and Jewish religious imagery
• Jewish Mysticism in Contemporary Culture

Recent and Upcoming Courses

• REL 202: Hebrew Scriptures: Experiencing the Hebrew Bible: History, Theology, Ideology
• REL 323: Religious Movements and Communities: Kabbalah
• REL 215: Judaism
• REL 312: Judaism and the Construction of Gender: Female Images of God in Judaism
• Jewish Mysticism in Popular Culture
• Jewish Identity in Film

Personal Statement

In my work on Jewish thought, I am most interested in the models people develop to express complex relationships between humanity and divinity, as well as the ways in which these models emphasize and transform cultural values. My current projects focus on the image of God as a nursing mother in Kabbalah and on kabbalistic literature’s presentation of marriage, gender and divinity in the domestic sphere.

Presentations and Speaking Engagements

• (March 2008), Divine Domesticity: Marriage, Gender and the Household in Jewish Mysticism, Franklin & Marshall College guest lecture series
• (December 2007, cancelled due to weather conditions) The House in the Center of All: Divinity as Dwelling Place in Sefer ha-Zohar, Association for Jewish Studies 39th Annual Conference
• November 2007 Kabbalistic Spirituality of the Home: The Divine Feminine and the Domestic Life of Medieval Jewry, The Louis J. Kuriansky Fall 2007 Annual Conference “The Appeal of Kabbalah and Mysticism in Contemporary Culture” at the University of Connecticut
• Dec 2006, The Image of God as a Suckling Mother in Sefer Ha-Zohar, Association for Jewish Studies 38th Annual Conference
• Dec 2005, Metaphor and Mother’s Milk: Suckling as Spiritual Transmission in Rabbinic Literature, Association for Jewish Studies 37th Annual Conference
• Nov 2005 Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in the Book of Zohar, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting
• Apr 2005 Bathed in Milk: The Image of God as a Suckling Mother in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah, University of Chicago Feminist Theories and the Study of Religion Club panel “Divine Representation: Inversion, Appropriation and Embodiment”