The Pentateuch is a survey course in which students examine the first five books of the canon of the Hebrew Bible. Students will attend to the patriarchs and matriarchs, the earliest covenants, the exodus traditions, laws, codes, and rituals of the agrarian society represented in the biblical world of the Pentateuch. Students will explore a) the socio-historical context out of which the biblical text most probably emerged, b) select methods and tools of biblical scholarship, and c) the engagement of modern users with the biblical text.
Instructor: Dr. Mónica I. Rey (she/her/ella) is adjunct professor of Gender Studies at Babson College and WGS at Wheaton College (MA). Her teaching specialty is in courses that tackle religion, gender, sexuality and violence. Among courses Rey has taught include: WGS101, LGBT101, Transnational Feminisms, Women & The World Religions, and Gender and Violence in the Bible. Rey is especially interested in teaching contextual interpretations of the Bible (especially from feminist and LGBT+ perspectives). As a Latina of Peruvian descent, Rey has an immense appreciation for different points of view, perspectives, and epistemologies. Her research focus navigates multiple worlds at these intersections. This is also reflected in her pedagogy which at its heart is intersectional, experiential, and embraces multiple diverse canons.
A feminist biblical scholar with a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University (2024), her research is primarily concerned with gender, genocide, and the Hebrew Bible (and its afterlives). Rey also completed a graduate certificate from BU in Women’s and Gender Studies and took part in the MIT GCWS Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women’s and Gender Studies which is an outstanding resource for research and collaboration in areas related to WGS. She has published on the law of the foreign female captive (Deut 21:10–14) as a case of genocidal rape in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Rey has a peer-reviewed journal article forthcoming on the use of just war theory in interpretations of Deuteronomy, as well as a chapter in the edited volume The Bible and Violence (Bloomsbury T&T Clark) titled, “Genocidal Language in the Hebrew Bible: A Reappraisal,” and a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Hebrew Bible, Gender and Sexuality, “Yefat To’ar in Deuteronomy 21:10–14 and the Role of Beauty in Warfare.” Her first book, Gendering Genocide in the Hebrew Bible is forthcoming with Routledge in the book series Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible. Rey is a 2023-2024 Charles E. Scheidt Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Faculty Fellow and currently co-chair of the Feminist Studies in Religion CoLaboratory.