Westar Institute presents: An Evening with the Authors & Scholars of Trans Biblical: New Approaches to Interpretation & Embodiment in Scripture

Join the Westar Institute for a profound and timely evening featuring the editors and visionary scholars behind the groundbreaking new volume, Trans Biblical: New Approaches to Interpretation & Embodiment in Scripture (WJK 2025).

Trans Biblical provides some of the most exciting new scholarly work in trans biblical interpretation to help us better understand our Bibles, our bodies, and each other in a fraught and fractious world.

If gender variation is as old as stories about creation, then biblical texts and traditions are far more capacious and variable than most expect. Too often, influential texts are deployed against trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people based on the assumption of a simple, stable gender binary. This evening, our guest panel will disrupt those assumptions.

What We Will Explore:

• A Capacious Past: How taking a closer look from Genesis through the Gospels, New Testament letters, and early rabbinic interpretations reveals deep histories of gender variation.
• New Tools for Interpretation: How readers can make more creative, reflexive, and accountable connections to scripture.
• Embodiment and Justice: How a deeper reckoning with the past builds our capacity to address urgent, present-day debates surrounding gender.

Whether you are a scholar, a faith leader, or someone seeking a more sensitive, contextually nuanced approach to scripture, this webinar meets an urgent need by offering a supportive, intellectually rigorous entry point into the future of biblical interpretation.

Meet the Panelists

Melissa Harl Sellew is Professor Emerita of Classical and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures at the University of Minnesota. She is the editor or co-editor of three previous collections: Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel; The Fabric of Early Christianity: Reflections in Honor of Helmut Koester by Fifty Years of Harvard Students; and Living for Eternity: The White Monastery and Its Neighborhood. Her recent publications bring a trans-sensitive lens to ancient works like the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Paul and Thecla. She is the recipient of a three-year NEH grant to support the digital humanities project Resurrecting Early Christian Lives, as well as a recipient of the Arthur Motley Teaching Award from the University of Minnesota.

Joseph A. Marchal is Professor of Religious Studies and affiliated faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at Ball State University. A biblical scholar focused on critical theories of interpretation and histories of reception, they are the author, editor, or co-editor of 12 books, including Appalling Bodies: Queer Figures Before and After Paul’s Letters (Oxford UP); After the Corinthian Women Prophets: Reimagining Rhetoric and Power (SBL); and Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies (Fordham UP). Dr. Marchal also served as the founding chair of the Society of Biblical Literature’s first-ever Committee for LGBTIQ+ Scholars and Scholarship and is the founding co-editor of QTR: A Journal of Trans and Queer Studies in Religion.

Katy E. Valentine is an ordained minister, public scholar, and the founder of Soul Forge Coaching, where she empowers entrepreneurs and leaders to expand their spirituality and increase their impact on the world. She is the author of For You Were Bought with a Price: Sex, Slavery, and Self-Control in a Pauline Community, alongside numerous articles on enslavement, embodiment, and transgender identities in the Bible. Her recent work includes “Examining Scripture in Light of Trans Women’s Voices” in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible. She serves as the co-chair of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible program unit.

‍