University of Dayton religious studies scholar Esther Brownsmith has received an international award for a paper regarding gender and sexuality in the Bible.
“The Monster at the End of This Essay: Incestuous Whores, Trans Monstrosity, and Genesis 38” won the 2025 Bernadette J. Brooten Award from the Society of Biblical Literature. The essay will appear as a chapter in her forthcoming book, to be released in 2027.
“This is an essay about monsters — the people that society labels as monsters, and the people who embrace that label for themselves. Perhaps you are one of them,” Brownsmith, assistant professor of the Hebrew Bible, writes to begin her piece.
Brownsmith joined the UD Department of Religious Studies in 2023. She holds a Master of Arts in religion from Yale Divinity School and received her doctorate from Brandeis University in 2020.
The Brooten Award is given to a scholar whose early career research develops innovative approaches to the critical study of gender, sexuality and/or embodiment in relation to biblical texts and traditions, especially with projects that foreground feminist, womanist, queer and/or trans approaches.
Her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Sacred Unhappiness: Reading the Bible with Feminist Killjoys, wrestles with the contours of women’s stories to provide an outline for a feminist reading of the Bible.
“It comes from the perspective of a woman in the modern world who wants to take the Scripture seriously, but doesn't want to let go of ethical priorities and beliefs,” Brownsmith said.
In this chapter, she focuses on the story of Tamar, a woman who impersonates a prostitute, tricking her father-in-law, Judah, into impregnating her to continue her deceased husband's lineage, from which she was denied. Traditionally, Tamar's actions are understood to be wicked or ambiguous at best.
Brownsmith retells the story using the concept of a “feminist killjoy,” a term coined by writer Sara Ahmed, to describe a woman who speaks up against injustice, unaffected by the discomfort it may cause.
“One of the maxims Ahmed describes for being a successful feminist killjoy is to be monstrous,” Brownsmith said. “I read this, and it clicked that Tamar is basically being a monster here. She's the scary woman in the attic. She's the scary woman hiding in the woods. I wanted to do it in a way where they could understand some of why she might have made the choices that she made.”
Brownsmith said parts of the story may be troubling to contemporary readers, as they were to the authors of the Bible. “That's the central theme of my book.”
She discusses Tamar's identity as not only a woman, but as a Canaanite, who were considered outsiders among the Israelites. She ties this to the modern issue of transgender discrimination, with society treating trans people like monsters who are to be excluded to keep everyone else safe.
“With that idea of Tamar as a monstrous figure, in the same way that trans people are monstrous — which is to say, not to condemn her as that, but rather to say, this is the place that society has put her — this is her choosing to embrace that marginal status of being the condemned outsider,” Brownsmith said.
Brownsmith plans to present her chapter in January to colleagues at the Department of Religious Studies colloquy.
She previously explored questions of gender and sexuality in the Old Testament in her first book, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor, published in 2024.
“It will probably not surprise either her colleagues or her students that Dr. Brownsmith is the recipient of the Brooten award,” said Jana Bennett, professor and chair of UD’s Department of Religious Studies. “This prestigious award supports what her colleagues and students already know — Dr. Brownsmith is an attentive and insightful researcher who asks compelling questions about tough Bible passages and the issues they raise. She teaches her students to do the same; we are grateful for her presence among us.”