PhD Oral Exam - Lucas Cober, Religion

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This dissertation is an examination of several key Hebrew Bible texts that feature disabled characters in prominent roles, and focuses on the ways in which those characters’ disabilities are being used to construct the boundaries of normative Israelite experience. I consider disability as an intersectional category that overlaps with other marginal identities such as animality, age, gender and sexuality. These identities are used in conjunction with each other by the authors and redactors of the texts in question to draw a boundary around what an acceptable human body should be like, primarily by showing what it should not be like. The dissertation uses novel interpretations of the relevant texts to demonstrate that ableist understandings of humans and the world are not necessary, and that the texts themselves can be read as undermining that very ideology, in order to add to a growing movement in biblical studies that sees the necessity of not only including, but centralizing, the experience of disabled people in our textual interpretation.