Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/01/2024
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

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Cost:
Free USD
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Website:
https://events.umich.edu/event/128020
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Organization:
Women's and Gender Studies Department

Online Zoom Webinar

Imperialism and Orientalism continue to color studies of gender in ancient Iraq. This talk outlines the challenges and opportunities that a rich corpus of religious and ritual texts, primarily from the late second and early first millennia BCE, presents for addressing this legacy. Contemporary understandings of gendered religious titles in Mesopotamia rely on Orientalist tropes that guided the decipherment of the Akkadian language itself, distorting our understanding of the social landscape of gender. Through a case study, I will show how a reevaluation of the textual record can furnish a more accurate understanding of the intersection of gender and religious authority in Mesopotamia.

Jessie DeGrado is an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan. His interests include the intersection of empire, gender, and religion in the early first millennium BCE. His current book project explores the entanglement of modern imperialism with the historiography of ancient empire. He is also in the early stages of a project that treats religious texts and ritual sites as loci of gender consolidation and contestation in ancient Mesopotamia.