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Bernadette J. Brooten Award for Scholarship in Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment

Award Title

Bernadette J. Brooten Award for Scholarship in Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment

Description

The primary goal for the Bernadette J. Brooten Award is to support and encourage early career researchers developing innovative approaches to the critical study of gender, sexuality, and/or embodiment in relation to biblical texts and traditions (broadly cast), especially with projects that foreground feminist, womanist, queer, and, or, as trans approaches.

Award

There is a $1,000 monetary award. The awarded paper will be delivered at a special session with a panel discussion at either the SBL Annual Meeting or International Meeting in the following calendar year. Complimentary registration will be provided to the award recipient for the meeting of their choosing. No one may receive this award more than once.

Qualifications for Submission

Any SBL member who is a current graduate student or has received a Ph.D. or Th.D. in biblical studies or a related field within the last ten years may submit a paper. This paper should be of publishable quality, and may be under review, already accepted, or recently published by a journal or other academic press (within the last year). If the paper was delivered at an annual or international SBL meeting, it must exhibit significant revision, as demonstrated by submission of both the original draft and the revision. Applicants to the Brooten Award may also submit to one of the other SBL Awards for the year (for instance, the Achtemeier, De Gruyter, Diamond, or Freedman awards).

Submission Requirements
  • Applicants must submit the following items no later than midnight (GMT-5) on 1 August 2024.
    • A brief abstract (limit 250 words) regarding how the paper advances some dimension of the critical study of gender, sexuality, and/or embodiment in biblical texts and traditions.
    • A paper, in English, of no more than 10,000 words including footnotes, and double-spaced. A bibliography is not required. If the paper is over the 10,000 word limit, it will be automatically disqualified.
    • All materials should be submitted via the SBL Paper Awards Form page. If applicants do not receive a confirmation of receipt within two (2) business days, they should contact Paige Schmidt.
    • SBL anticipates announcing the award recipient by 15 October 2024.

*** Failure to follow all submission requirements may result in an automatic disqualification.

The committee review process is a blind peer review. All submissions are anonymized prior to committee review.

Criteria

Applicants should consult the SBL Handbook of Style. The subject of the paper is open, so long as its advances some dimension of the critical study of gender, sexuality, and/or embodiment in biblical texts and traditions (broadly cast), with at least some attention to feminist, womanist, queer, and, or, as trans approaches (among other related critical approaches not yet anticipated by scholars at the beginning of the twenty-first century). The paper will be evaluated in accordance with the following criteria:
  1. A persuasive thesis that engages emerging methodologies and changing paradigms in relation to gender, sexuality, and/or embodiment, and demonstrates quality of scholarship and significance to the field;
  2. Originality and creativity;
  3. Clarity of expression and thought.

The Award Committee

The submissions will be reviewed by a committee of three scholars with significant background in the critical study of gender, sexuality, and/or embodiment in biblical texts and traditions (broadly cast), with at least some attention to feminist, womanist, queer, and, or, as trans approaches. Given patterns of historical and ongoing inequities, it will be essential that the reviewers not be drawn exclusively from historically over-represented groups and thus include one (or more) scholar(s) working with womanist, queer, and, or, as trans approaches. To insure this, nominations for scholars to serve on the Brooten Award committee should come from both the Status of Women in the Profession Committee and the Committee for LGBTIQ+ Scholars and Scholarship.
 
 
 


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