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About the Event
On Tuesday, September 22, University of Richmond Professor of Religious Studies and Weinstein & Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies Rhiannon Graybill will deliver a short presentation entitled "This is Not My Beautiful Body" as part of the Hebrew Bible Scholars in Virginia Series. The presentation will begin at 12:30 PM in Gibson Hall room 341, with lunch provided (first come, first served) and a short Q&A to follow. This event is open to UVA faculty and students.
The Hebrew Bible Scholars in Virginia Series
This talk is part of the Hebrew Bible Scholars in Virginia series, which brings together leading scholars from across the commonwealth to present new research on and approaches to one of the world's most fascinating texts. The Series is sponsored by UVA Jewish Studies in conjunction with the Fall 2026 courses RELC/RELJ 1210 Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and RELC/RELJ 3292 The Book of Job, taught by Jewish Studies faculty member Martien Halvorson-Taylor.
Presentation Abstract
The Hebrew Bible is filled with peculiar, striking representations of female bodies. They transform into land or landscape features; they entice with the delights of a garden; they create new life, in both strange and ordinary ways; they sometimes simply disappear. Contemporary fiction is also filled with peculiar, transformative representations of the female body. Women transform into plants, planets, moons, and voids. Bodies spout flowers and mushrooms, or transform into sea creatures, dragons, or dogs. This talk imagines a shared space in which these peculiar, mutable, and often excessive bodies can encounter one another. Dr. Graybill suggests that contemporary fiction about weird female bodies is uniquely positioned to open up biblical texts about weird female bodies as sites of literary and feminist pleasure and possibility. On the level of method, she argues for reading the Bible with and through literature. On the level of affect, she offers a plea to open yourself to weirdness. Read with a weird story, a weird conceit, a weird point of entry into the text. Read a little weirdly. On the level of feminist attachments, she invites readers to let go of the conviction that we already know what these texts about female bodies will show us (usually, sexualization, exploitation, reproductive commodification, or misogyny).