Ashley L. Bacchi

Home institution

Starr King School for the Ministry

Research project

The Sibyl: A Forgotten Female Voice of Prophetic Justice

Ancient and modern debates on gender roles and models of female authority engage manifestations of the Mediterranean prophetess, the Sibyl. Bacchi will investigate the Archaic Greek and Roman Libri Sibyllini traditions, the Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha, and survey the visual reception history of Sibyls in later Christian and secular art to explore the power of female representation in spaces of political and religious authority, and how prophetic voices speak to institutionalized power.

Profile

Ashley L. Bacchi is the Assistant Professor of Jewish History and Ancient Mediterranean Religions at Starr King School for the Ministry. She received her doctorate in Jewish History and Culture at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. An interdisciplinary scholar with a background in classics, art history and archaeology, she received her master's degree at the GTU and SKSM in cultural and historical studies of religion, focusing on Jewish and Christian traditions. Her scholarship focuses primarily on women and power in the literary and material culture of the Hellenistic world to offer counter narratives to uncontested male dominance in Ancient Mediterranean. Her work contributes to the historical discourses associated with women’s ordination, reproductive rights, and gender diversity in prophetic authority and political leadership.

Prof. Bacchi has dedicated herself to an interdisciplinary approach to Ancient Mediterranean religions and culture to break down oppressive models that enforce simplistic dichotomies and kyriarchies. Her work contextualizes texts that have been used to marginalize and oppress people through the normalization and naturalization of systems of oppression. In raising up silenced voices and traditions, she challenges meta-narratives that enforce the regulation of gender performance and the restraining of sexuality. 

Prof. Bacchi has presented her work in the U.S., Europe, and Oceania, and she has published in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, Journal of Feminist Studies and Religion, and the Shlavi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Her award-winning book, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, & Politics (Leiden: Brill, 2020) represents her background in Intersectional Feminist and Literary Theory, Art History & Archaeology, and Ancient Mediterranean History.

Course

HDS 1983: The Sibylline Oracles: A Female Voice of Prophetic Justice in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Fall 2024)