Preston H. Kelsey Professor of Religion
Susan Ackerman joined the Religion Department in 1990 after teaching at the University of Arizona and at Winthrop College in South Carolina. She is a specialist in the religion of ancient Israel and the religions of Israel's neighbors (Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan), an interest she first developed as an undergraduate religion major at Dartmouth (A.B., 1980) and continued to explore in graduate school at Harvard (M.T.S., 1982; Ph.D., 1987).
Her publications include several articles and three books, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah (Scholars Press, 1992); Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel (Doubleday, 1998); and When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David (Columbia University Press, 2005). During her sabbatical year in 2008-2009, Professor Ackerman will be working on a book on women and the religion of ancient Israel.
Professor Ackerman is also a member of the faculty of the Program of Women's and Gender Studies at Dartmouth.
