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Faculty Bio | |
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Elizabeth Castelli
Professor
Barnard College
Religion, Barnard College |
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Biography
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. Beginning in the fall of 2004, she is 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 has recently become the editor of the 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). 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. In addition to numerous translations and articles in this area, she recently completed a book, 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" will appear in an article to be published in a forthcoming thematic issue of The Journal of Human Rights devoted to the persecution of Christians in the contemporary world. Castelli continues her involvement with the NYU Center for Religion and Media as a member of the 2004-2005 working group devoted to the theme, "Christianity in Old and New Media."
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; among others.
Castelli is active in numerous professional organizations and collaborations. In addition to those already mentioned, she serves on two steering committees in the American Academy of Religion: for the Consultation on the Cultural History of the Study of Religion and for the Consultation on Foucault and Religion. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 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 and currently serves as the chair of the Council's Program Committee.
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. | |
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