Texts after Terror
Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible
Rhiannon Graybill
Reviews and Awards
"The volume moves beyond the usual feminist approaches to these stories and, as such, is bound to stimulate further discussion and reflection." -- ERYL W. DAVIES, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
"...this is a book pushes at the issues it raises in ways that linger, and that alone may commend it." -- Sandra Gravett, Appalachian State University, Society of Biblical Literature
"Her ultimate conclusion is compelling: feminist readings of texts should be seeking to find ways to contend with stories of sexual violence in the Bible rather than simply retelling difficult stories." -- M. M. Veeneman, CHOICE Connect, Vol. 59 No. 8
"In Texts After Terror, Graybill models a way of reading biblical texts that honors and reveals their complexity, and provides the next generation of feminist scholars, and really all biblical readers, a way to continue to engage critically and authentically with many of the Bible's most disturbing narratives." -- Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky, Dean of List College and the Kekst Graduate School, The Jewish Theological Seminary
"Texts after Terror is a daring and devastating tour de force — raising new questions, evoking new feelings, and proposing new relations for what else and what comes after multiple forms of sexual harm. With characteristic wit and anger, breadth and incision, brilliance and ambivalence, Rhiannon Graybill takes biblical interpretation beyond the depressingly low bar of consent toward other possibilities. Grappling with these texts and their violences requires staying with their manifest troubles and refusing their redemption or recuperation. In this and many other ways, Texts after Terror is as unsettling as it is indispensable." -- Joseph Marchal, Professor of Religious Studies, Ball State University
"Rhiannon Graybill shows herself a worthy inheritor of feminist biblical scholarship to build upon, poke holes in, push further, and complexify how rape tales have been read. Her "unhappy readings" of these tales take up feminist, queer, and strands of other theorization about sex, rape, rape culture, and power by reading through literature to situate the tales in the persistent misogyny that sadly still marks our own times." -- Steed Vernyl Davidson, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, McCormick Theological Seminary