• Near Eastern and Judaic Studies
• BRANDEIS HOME

Current Staff

Director, Principal Investigator

Bernadette J. Brooten

Bernadette J. Brooten, director of the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, is Robert and Myra Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies and Professor of Women’s Studies at Brandeis University and a former MacArthur Fellow. She has also held fellowships from the Harvard Law School, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and many other granting agencies.

Brooten is currently writing a book on early Christian women who were enslaved or who were slave-holding, and she is editing a volume on slavery’s long shadow over the lives of girls and women that will focus on the intersection of slavery, religion, women, and sexuality.

She has written Women Leaders in The Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982) and Love Between Women:Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), for which she received three awards. In addition, she has published articles on Paul and the Jewish Law, Jewish epigraphy, papyrological and literary evidence for Jewish women's power to initiate divorce in antiquity, and on various topics of ancient Jewish and early Christian women's history.

Brooten studied German at the University of Portland (B.A. 1971), Roman Catholic and Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen; Talmud and Jewish history at Hebrew University and the University of Tübingen; and New Testament, ancient post-Biblical Judaism, and early Christian literature at Harvard University (Ph.D. 1982). She previously taught at the School of Theology at Claremont, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tübingen, Harvard Divinity School and the Department of Theology of the University of Oslo in Norway.

Contact: brooten@brandeis.edu

Project Coordinator

Sara Carrigan Wooten

Sara Carrigan Wooten is a master's student in Educational Studies at Tufts University. She received her M.A. in Sociology & Women's and Gender Studies from Brandeis University in 2011 and her B.A. in Women's Studies from Purdue University in 2008. She is currently conducting a study on LGBTQ student experiences of sexual violence in Atlanta area higher education institutions.

Wooten has worked as a community activist in numerous positions. She provided individual, policy and legislative advocacy on issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression while serving as the Advocacy Coordinator for the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance. She also served as a board member for Indiana Equality, a statewide LGBT advocacy organization. Wooten was founding editor of a Purdue University campus magazine of survivors of sexual assault stories and served as a peer leader in Boilers Educating Against Rape at Purdue University. Wooten served as volunteer coordinator and victim advocate for the Coalition Against Rape and Domestic Violence in Missouri. She has successfully presented her work at regional and national feminist and education conferences.

Contact: fseproject@brandeis.edu

Publications Editor

J.L. Hazelton

J.L. Hazelton is a doctoral candidate in the politics department at Brandeis University, where she is studying international security. Her interests include asymmetric warfare, insurgency, terrorism and Islamic political thought.

Hazelton came to Brandeis after a career as an international journalist, including a 12-year stint with The Associated Press as a reporter, editor and broadcaster. Reporting from the United Nations to Tokyo, her byline has appeared around the world. As an editor, she has helped shape coverage of major stories from the Mississippi River Flood of 1993 to the Iraq war. At the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, Hazelton is editing essays for a volume of the contributors collected works.

Hazelton holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. in International Relations from Chicago as well.