Susan Ackerman
Preston H. Kelsey Professorship in ReligionProfessor of Women's and Gender Studies Professor of Jewish Studies
Susan Ackerman joined the Religion Department in 1990 after teaching at the University of Arizona and at Winthrop College in South Carolina. She is a specialist in the religion of ancient Israel and the religions of Israel's neighbors (Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan), an interest she first developed as an undergraduate religion major at Dartmouth (A.B., 1980) and continued to explore in graduate school at Harvard (M.T.S., 1982; Ph.D., 1987).
Her publications include several articles and three books, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah (Scholars Press, 1992); Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel (Doubleday, 1998); and When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David (Columbia University Press, 2005). She has recently completed a draft of a new book, on women and the religion of ancient Israel.
Professor Ackerman is also a member of the faculty of the Program in Women's and Gender Studies at Dartmouth.
Selected Publications
When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David (2005).
Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel (1998).
Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah (1992).