Barbara Geller

Professor of Religious Studies

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 283-2601
Email:
bgeller@wellesley.edu
Department
Religious Studies
Jewish Studies
Middle Eastern Studies

Interests include the Jewish and Christian communities of the Roman Empire, women in the Biblical world, and the history of Jerusalem.

Barbara Geller is a longtime faculty member of the Department of Religious Studies, and also teaches in the interdepartmental Programs in Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Her interests include the Jewish and Christian communities of the Roman Empire, with a focus on the communities of Roman Palestine, especially in the first and fourth centuries. Additional interests include women in the Biblical world and the history of Jerusalem. She has a burgeoning interest in Roman-era medicine, and in the understandings and treatment of domesticated animals in the Roman Empire.

Her courses encompass a broad range of topics from antiquity to the present. A number of the courses include aspects of the history of Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire with attention both to archaeological and literary sources and issues of historical reconstruction.

She shares with her family an interest in animal welfare and a love of cats.

Education

  • B.A., Princeton University
  • M.A., Duke University
  • Ph.D., Duke University

Current and upcoming courses

The Holocaust and the Nazi State

REL245

An examination of the origins, character, course, and consequences of Nazi antisemitism during the Third Reich.  Special attention to Nazi racialist ideology, and how it shaped policies that affected such groups as the Jews, the disabled, the Roma, Poles and Russians, Afro-Germans, and gay men.  Consideration of the impact of Nazism on women and on the German medical and teaching professions.

(JWST 245 and REL 245 are cross-listed courses.)

  • Study of the New Testament

    REL105

    The writings of the New Testament as diverse expressions of the Jesus Movement and early Christianity. Close reading of the texts, with particular emphasis on the Gospels and the letters of Paul. Treatment of the historical, theological, and literary dimensions of the texts, as well as of methods of interpretation. The beginnings of the break between the Jesus movement and Judaism and the challenges posed by Roman rule will be specially considered.