Scholarship

My academic scholarship and research interests

I believe biblical interpretation consists of cultural, communal, and contextual practices; in other words, human enterprises. And human relationships represent complex modes of being. For me, the special key for the future comes with the body—the body engrossed in delineations, pleasures, suppressions, touch, un/stabilizations, gendered constructions and relationships. Behind and beyond theory and text, embodied humans linger. Clumsily, gracefully, tip-toeing, tromping, balancing, and mis/handling, humans create text, touch the text, put boundaries on the text, and read the text. Due to the proliferation of bodily identities and positions in a complex world, the ones entrusted with biblical interpretation, especially ones like me—white, middle-class, main-line Protestant—must continue to find ways to make room for one another, to destabilize hegemonic declarations so that multiple communities can enter into conversations, and to ethically examine one's own perspective based on one's communities in order to connect with the larger world.

"Katherine's gifted writing incorporates the literary and visual culture of Job with delightful interdisciplinary research that leads us inquisitively on a journey through ongoing discourse and artistic representations for more than two thousand years."
– Dr. Leo Perdue, Dissertation Director

Monograph/Book

The Bible, Gender, and Reception History: The Case of Job's Wife, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies series, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013

Dr. Katherine Low's Latest Book



Encyclopedia Articles

"Job's Wife: Judaism; Visual Arts; Christianity; Literature; Hebrew Bible/Old Testament" in Volume 14 of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, published by DeGruyter
https://www.degruyter.com/view/db/ebr



Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

"Paganism, Goddess Spirituality, and Elsa in Disney’s Frozen 2,” in Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 33.2, 89-104 (Summer 2021):
https://www.utpjournals.press/toc/jrpc/33/2

"Implications Surrounding Girding the Loins in Light of Gender, Body, and Power" in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36.1, 3-30 (September 2011):
https://jot.sagepub.com/content/36/1.toc

"The Sexual Abuse of Lot's Daughters: Reconceptualizing Kinship for the Sake of Our Daughters" in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26.2, eds. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre (Fall 2010):
https://www.fsrinc.org/journal/volume-26-number-2/

"Lot’s Wife is Still Standing: In Search for the Pillar of Salt,” in Journal of the Bible and Its Reception, Vol. 8.1, 79-105 (2021):
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jbr/8/1/html

"Holy Ground for Teaching and Learning" in Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education 5.1, eds. Deborah Osberg, William E. Doll, Jr. and Donna Trueit (July 2008):
https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity/issue/view/563



Book Chapters

"Zombies in the Biblical Studies Classroom? BINGO!” in eds. Jocelyn McWhirter and Sylvie Raquel, Teaching the Bible With Undergraduates, 199-204 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2022)

"Queen Esther Imagined as a Disney Princess" in Dan Clanton, Jr. and Terry Clark, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture, 83-103 (Oxford University Press, November 2020):
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34246



Book Reviews

Major review of Samuel Balentine's Have You Considered my Servant Job? Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, January 2017.
https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/intc/current

Review of The Love of David and Jonathan: Ideology, Text, Reception by James E. Harding (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013), Review of Biblical Literature, July 2014
https://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9116

Review of Julie Faith Parker, ed., My So-Called Biblical Life: Imagined Stories from the World’s Best-Selling Book (Wipf & Stock, 2017), Review of Biblical Literature, January, 2019.



Media

"The Biblical Tradition of Wisdom," solicited faculty essay about Mary Baldwin College’s annual 2011-2012 theme of wisdom.
https://www.marybaldwin.edu/news/2011/12/01/words-of-wisdom/