Visiting Professors for Summer Term 2023

About Professor Lily Vuong: 

Lily Vuong is Professor of Religious Studies at Central Washington University. Her research interests focus on women and gender in early Christianity and are shaped by a broader concern for early Jewish and Christian self-definition, literary approaches to ancient literature, and the place of non-canonical writings in the history of biblical interpretation. She is the author of Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James (Mohr Siebeck, 2013) and The Protevangelium of James (Polebridge Press, 2019), as well as editor of Religious Competition in the Third Century CE (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Press, 2014), Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World (SBL Press, 2016), and The Fate of the Temple Vessels Jewish Antiquity (Near Eastern Archaeology, 2019). She was also the recipient of the 2019 Shohet Scholars Award and a 2021-2022 Senior Fellow at the Universität Regensburg's Beyond Canon: Heterotopias of Religious Authority in Ancient Christianity (DFG Centre for Advanced Studies). 

About Professor Moshe Naor: 

Moshe Naor is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Israel Studies at the University of Haifa. His main research interests focus on Israeli history; History of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews; Jewish-Arab Relations; and War and Society. He has been a Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at UCLA and at Dartmouth College. He is the author of: Social Mobilization in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front (Routledge, 2013). His book, written together with Abigail Jacobson, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, was published in 2016 by Brandeis University Press. The book, Oriental Neighbors, won the Shapiro Award of the Association for Israel Studies for the Best Book in Israel Studies. His current research is on Haifa: A Sephardi and Mizrahi History of a Mediterranean Port City from the Late Ottoman Period through the British Mandate. 

Check out the courses they're offering this summer:

Professor Lily Vuong's course: 

JWST 74.01/REL57.02/MES 17.08 (The Jewish Jesus) 

It is certain that Jesus of Nazareth lived in the first century C.E. and that his followers interpreted his life and death as harbingers of a new age. However, recent scholarship has made clear that Jesus was fully embedded in the Judaism of his time: the Jewish diversity of the period and Jewish resistance to the Roman Empire. This course examines the life of Jesus the Jew prior to the early Church's interpretation of Jesus as Christ; modern Jewish and Islamic views of Jesus, as well as his portrayal in contemporary film and art, will also be explored. 

Section 1 meets at 11 hour. 

Section 2 meets at 10 hour. 

Professor Moshe Naor's course: 

JWST 40.01/Govt 40.09/ MES 12.09 (Politics of Israel and Palestine)  

This course explores the century-old conflict as seen from the political structures and changing narratives of Israelis and Palestinians, including the Zionist movement and the responses of the Palestinian Arab community to it; the formation of the Arab national movement as a whole—and within this, the claims of Palestinians before and after the British Mandate; the founding of the state of Israel and the formation of the post-1948 Palestinian national movement; the aftermath of the 1967 war; the start of the Israeli occupation and the latter's impact on Israeli institutions, economy, and political parties;  and the Palestine Liberation Organization and the founding of Hamas. We will explore contemporary political and economic developments in light of the global forces operating on the region and consider the plausibility of a two-state solution. 

Class meets at 12 hour.