Sun. Feb 23rd, 2025

Johns Hopkins HB/NWS Alumni Dissertations

This page catalogues the previous Johns Hopkins University HB/NWS (and occasionally broader Near Eastern Studies) alumni and their dissertations. I attempt comprehensiveness, but err on the side of prioritizing research on the dissertations which most interest me. I have in mind a long term research project to write a history of the department, an important part of which are the dissertation experiences of its students.

For recent JHU NES alumni and their dissertations, see here.

Jason (Jay) Weimar (2024): “Before the Hajj: The haggāt Feasts at Pre-Islamic Dadan (Al-Ula) and Elsewhere in the Near East”

Description forthcoming.

Noah Crabtree (2023): “The Prophet From Anathoth: Benjamin-Judean Identity Negotiation and the Formation of the Book of Jeremiah”

Description forthcoming.

Adam Bean (2022): “Local Cults and National Gods: Divine Identity in Iron Age Levantine Religion”

Description forthcoming.

Greg Church (2021): “The Defilement of the Land in the Hebrew Bible: Exploring the Social Uses of Disgust, Law, and Ritual”

Description forthcoming.

Kathryn Medill (2020): “You Will Know Me by My Writing: The Scribes’ Choice of Goal-Marking Strategies in Biblical Hebrew in the Light of Social, Historical, and Linguistic Correlates”

Description forthcoming.

David J. Rosenstein (2020): “Deuteronomy and Rhetoric: The Art of Practical Argumentation in Ancient Israel”

Description forthcoming.

Rosanne Libermann (2019): “‘Hearts of Flesh’: Collective Identity and the Body in the Book of Ezekiel”

Description forthcoming.

Erin Guinn-Villareal (2018): “Biblical Hebrew qin’â and the Maintenance of Social Integrity in Ancient Israelite Literature”

Description forthcoming.

William Reed (2018): “Yahweh’s ‘Cruel Sword’: The Manifestation of Punishment and the Trauma of Exile”

Description forthcoming.

John Tracy Thames Jr. (2016): “Ritual Revision and the Influence of Empire: The Politics of Change in the zukru Festival of Late Bronze Emar”

Description forthcoming.

Laura Wright (2016): “Glyptic Art Under and After Empire: Late Bronze IIB and Iron I Scarabs and Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant”

Description forthcoming.

Michael Simone (2015): “On Fire: Preternatural and Hypostatic Fire in Ancient Israelite Religion”

Description forthcoming.

Erin Fleming (2013): “The Politics of Sexuality in the Story of King David”

Description forthcoming.

Heather Dana Davis Parker (2013): “The Levant Comes of Age: The Ninth Century BCE through Script Traditions”

Description forthcoming.

Jaime L. Waters (2013): “Threshing Floors as Sacred Spaces in the Hebrew Bible”

Description forthcoming.

Isabel Cranz (2012): “Impurity and Ritual in the Priestly Source and Assyro-Babylonian Incantations”

Description forthcoming.

Heath Dewrell (2012): “Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel and Its Opponents”

Description forthcoming.

Andrew Knapp (2012): “Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East”

Description forthcoming.

Others to be continued.

Description forthcoming.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ (1956): “The Syntax of Imperial Aramaic Based on Documents Found in Egypt”

Dissertation advised by William Foxwell Albright. Although the dissertation remained unpublished, a part of it was used in an article, “The Syntax of kl, kl‘, ‘All’ in Aramaic Texts from Egypt and in Biblical Aramaic,” Bib 38 (1957) 170-84; reprinted, A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (SBLMS 25; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979) 205-17.

William L. Moran, SJ (1950): “A Syntactical Study of the Dialect of Byblos as Reflected in the Amarna Tablets”

Dissertation advised by William Foxwell Albright. Republished in Amarna Studies: Collected Writings (Brill: 2003).