Overview

Are We Not Men? offers an innovative approach to gender and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible, revealing the male body as a source of persistent difficulty for the Hebrew prophets. Drawing together key moments in prophetic embodiment, Graybill demonstrates that the prophetic body is a queer body, and its very instability makes possible new understandings of biblical masculinity. Prophecy disrupts the performance of masculinity and demands new ways of inhabiting the body and negotiating gender. Graybill explores prophetic masculinity through critical readings of a number of prophetic bodies, including Isaiah, Moses, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In addition to close readings of the biblical texts, this account engages with modern intertexts drawn from philosophy, psychoanalysis, and horror films: Isaiah meets the poetry of Anne Carson; Hosea is seen through the lens of possession films and feminist film theory; Jeremiah intersects with psychoanalytic discourses of hysteria; and Ezekiel encounters Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Graybill also offers a careful analysis of the body of Moses. Her methods highlight unexpected features of the biblical texts, and illuminate the peculiar intersections of masculinity, prophecy, and the body in and beyond the Hebrew Bible. This assembly of prophets, bodies, and readings makes clear that attending to prophecy and to prophetic masculinity is an important task for queer reading. Biblical prophecy engenders new forms of masculinity and embodiment; Are We Not Men?offers a valuable map of this still-uncharted terrain.

Full Product Details

Author:   Rhiannon Graybill (Assistant Professor of Religion, Assistant Professor of Religion, Rhodes College)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 16.80cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780190227364

ISBN 10:   0190227362
Pages:   200
Publication Date:   26 January 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 The Materiality of Moses: The Prophet's Body in Trouble Chapter 2 The Horror of Hosea: Female Bodies and Masculine Anxieties in Hosea 1-3 Chapter 3 The Hysteria of Jeremiah: Gender and Voice in the Confessions Chapter 4 The Unmanning of Ezekiel: The Prophet's Body Voluptuous and Shattered in Ezekiel 1-5 Chapter 5 The Queer Prophetic Body Chapter 6 Final Reflections Bibliography

Reviews

Her innovation is bringing the male prophetic body, not just prophetic words, under consideration. Graybill's methodological approach opens up new and exciting avenues. Considering the prophetic books alongside modern intertexts that draw from a variety of fields, from psychoanalysis to film, allows readers to discover new sides to the texts heretofore unexplored As a whole, Are We Not Men? is a brilliant little book that should be required reading for any scholar of biblical masculinity and queer studies. --Sarah E.G. Fein, Ancient Jew Review Are We Not Men? is a beautiful book that accomplishes an amazing tour de force in the field of synchronic intertextual studies with a plurality of very productive interactions between ancient and contemporary texts. Moreover, Graybill succeeds in 'gendering' prophetic male bodies and revealing their unstable masculinities. This monograph will most definitely provide food for thought to biblical, queer, and feminist scholars on issues of gender, embodiment, and prophecy. --Reading Religion Rhiannon Graybill offers an important book that is also a delight to readserious and playful, inventive and inviting. From Isaiah's years of nakedness to Jonah's days in a fish, with help from the poetry of Anne Carson and case studies by Freud, we are led to see and then to think the bodies of Hebrew prophets in all their stubborn strangeness. --Mark Jordan, Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard University A clear, compelling book from one of the most important new voices in biblical studies. Are We Not Men? beautifully assembles prophetic texts, feminist philosophy, queer theory, poetry and film in a stunning account of prophecy as a gender-bending bodily experience that exposes the vulnerability and power of life in the flesh. The prophets appear in an altogether new and totally relevant form in this urgently needed book. --Rachel Havrelock, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago Rhiannon Graybill's book demonstrates why biblical scholars should take the risk of engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary conversation partners. Through her engagement with Carol Cleaver's theorization of gender and horror films, with a psychoanalytic model of hysteria, and with the drama of 'unmanning' in a nineteenth-century memoir, Graybill makes a persuasive argument for reading the bodies of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible as queer bodies. --Sean D. Burke, Associate Professor of Religion, Luther College, Decorah IA Are We Not Men? is a beautiful book that accomplishes an amazing tour de force in the field of synchronic intertextual studies with a plurality of very productive interactions between ancient and contemporary texts. Moreover, Graybill succeeds in 'gendering' prophetic male bodies and revealing their unstable masculinities. This monograph will most definitely provide food for thought to biblical, queer, and feminist scholars on issues of gender, embodiment, and prophecy. --Reading Religion Rhiannon Graybill offers an important book that is also a delight to read-serious and playful, inventive and inviting. From Isaiah's years of nakedness to Jonah's days in a fish, with help from the poetry of Anne Carson and case studies by Freud, we are led to see and then to think the bodies of Hebrew prophets in all their stubborn strangeness. --Mark Jordan, Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard University A clear, compelling book from one of the most important new voices in biblical studies. Are We Not Men? beautifully assembles prophetic texts, feminist philosophy, queer theory, poetry and film in a stunning account of prophecy as a gender-bending bodily experience that exposes the vulnerability and power of life in the flesh. The prophets appear in an altogether new and totally relevant form in this urgently needed book. --Rachel Havrelock, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago Rhiannon Graybill's book demonstrates why biblical scholars should take the risk of engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary conversation partners. Through her engagement with Carol Cleaver's theorization of gender and horror films, with a psychoanalytic model of hysteria, and with the drama of 'unmanning' in a nineteenth-century memoir, Graybill makes a persuasive argument for reading the bodies of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible as queer bodies. --Sean D. Burke, Associate Professor of Religion, Luther College, Decorah IA -Rhiannon Graybill offers an important book that is also a delight to read-serious and playful, inventive and inviting. From Isaiah's years of nakedness to Jonah's days in a fish, with help from the poetry of Anne Carson and case studies by Freud, we are led to see and then to think the bodies of Hebrew prophets in all their stubborn strangeness.---Mark Jordan, Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard University -A clear, compelling book from one of the most important new voices in biblical studies. Are We Not Men? beautifully assembles prophetic texts, feminist philosophy, queer theory, poetry and film in a stunning account of prophecy as a gender-bending bodily experience that exposes the vulnerability and power of life in the flesh. The prophets appear in an altogether new and totally relevant form in this urgently needed book.---Rachel Havrelock, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago -Rhiannon Graybill's book demonstrates why biblical scholars should take the risk of engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary conversation partners. Through her engagement with Carol Cleaver's theorization of gender and horror films, with a psychoanalytic model of hysteria, and with the drama of 'unmanning' in a nineteenth-century memoir, Graybill makes a persuasive argument for reading the bodies of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible as queer bodies.- --Sean D. Burke, Associate Professor of Religion, Luther College, Decorah IA

-Rhiannon Graybill offers an important book that is also a delight to read-serious and playful, inventive and inviting. From Isaiah's years of nakedness to Jonah's days in a fish, with help from the poetry of Anne Carson and case studies by Freud, we are led to see and then to think the bodies of Hebrew prophets in all their stubborn strangeness.---Mark Jordan, Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard University-A clear, compelling book from one of the most important new voices in biblical studies. Are We Not Men? beautifully assembles prophetic texts, feminist philosophy, queer theory, poetry and film in a stunning account of prophecy as a gender-bending bodily experience that exposes the vulnerability and power of life in the flesh. The prophets appear in an altogether new and totally relevant form in this urgently needed book.---Rachel Havrelock, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago-Rhiannon Graybill's book demonstrates why biblical scholars should take the risk of engaging with a wide range of interdisciplinary conversation partners. Through her engagement with Carol Cleaver's theorization of gender and horror films, with a psychoanalytic model of hysteria, and with the drama of 'unmanning' in a nineteenth-century memoir, Graybill makes a persuasive argument for reading the bodies of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible as queer bodies.- --Sean D. Burke, Associate Professor of Religion, Luther College, Decorah IA

Author Information

Rhiannon Graybill is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. She holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

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