Tracy Lemos

T. M. Lemos is a historian of violence and a religion scholar.  Originally trained in biblical studies and the ancient history of Israel/Palestine, her research has turned in the past decade to the comparative history of violence and genocide studies.  She has published on dehumanization, rituals of violence, gender and violence--focusing especially on masculinity--and how violence relates to and produces social hierarchies of various kinds.  She is currently writing a book on healing from dehumanizing violence that examines how communities develop robust modes of resisting dehumanization that are both specific to the forms of violence deployed against them and also reflect and draw inspiration from the responses of other dehumanized communities. The book thus examines healing from dehumanization--or rehumanization--as a transnational and transhistorical phenomenon.  Lemos is also interested in the history of kinship and family and has begun a collaborative project with the anthropologist Andrea S. Allen exploring the development of new forms of kinship in queer communities in contemporary Canada and the United States.  The project will foreground not just the anthropological aspects of queer kinship but the ethical aspects, as well, highlighting the liberative aspects of queer families but also the ways in which queer kinship sometimes perpetuates cultural, racial, and other hierarchies.

Select Publications

Books
Ben Kiernan, T. M. Lemos, and Tristan Taylor, eds. Cambridge World History of Genocide, Volume 1: Genocide in the Ancient, Medieval, and Premodern Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Våld och vapen i Bibelns värld och vår: Två essäer. (Violence and Weaponry in the World of the Bible and in Ours: Two Essays.) Translated into Swedish by Thomas Kazen. Tro & Liv Bibel 1. Stockholm: Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm, 2020.

Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.  

Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.  Paperback edition, 2014.  

Select Articles and Book Chapters
“Genocide in Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Sources.” Pages 185-208 in Cambridge World History of Genocide, Volume 1, edited by Ben Kiernan, T. M. Lemos, and Tristan Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

With Seth Richardson. “Genocide in Mesopotamia in the Bronze and Iron Ages.” Pages 209-234 in Cambridge World History of Genocide, Volume 1, edited by Ben Kiernan, T. M. Lemos, and Tristan Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

“Israelite Bows and American Guns.” Pages 77-92 in God and Guns: The Bible and American Gun Culture, edited by Carly L. Crouch and Christopher Hays. Foreword by Stanley Hauerwas. Westminster John Knox Press, 2021.

“Order from Chaos: Comparing Approaches to Violence in Anthropology, Assyriology, and the Study of the Hebrew Bible’,” Currents in Biblical Research 18.2 (2020): 160-175.

“Dispossessing Nations: Population Growth, Scarcity, and Genocide in Ancient Israel and Twentieth-century Rwanda.” Pages 27-66 in Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible: New Perspectives, edited by Saul M. Olyan.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.  

“The Apotheosis of Rage: Divine Anger and the Psychology of Israelite Trauma,” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 101-121.

“Where There is Dirt, Is There System?: Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.3 (2013): 265-294.

“The Emasculation of Exile: Hypermasculinity and Feminization in the Book of Ezekiel.” Pages 377-393 in Interpreting Exile: Interdisciplinary Studies of Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob Wright. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.

“‘Like the Eunuch Who Does Not Beget’: Gender, Mutilation, and Negotiated Status in the Ancient Near East.” Pages 47-66 in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature, edited by Jeremy Schipper and Candida R. Moss. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

“The Universal and the Particular: Mary Douglas and the Politics of Impurity.” The Journal of Religion 89.2 (2009): 236-251.

“Shame and Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 125.2 (2006): 225-241.