Gender, Genocide, Gaza and the Book of Esther
- Date: Monday 13 October 2025, 13:00 – 14:30
- Location: Social Sciences Building, seminar rooms 12.21 and 12.25
- Cost: Free to attend
In this timely and urgent conversation, Professor Sarojini Nadar introduces her new monograph, Gender, Genocide, Gaza and the Book of Esther: Engaging Texts of Terror(ism).
The Centres for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Religion and Public Life, and Ethnicity and Racism Studies warmly invite you to a thought-provoking book talk:
How do sacred texts legitimise violence?
Professor Sarojini Nadar introduces her new monograph, Gender, Genocide, Gaza and the Book of Esther: Engaging Texts of Terror(ism) (Routledge, 2025).
Through a decolonial feminist lens, the book interrogates the biblical Book of Esther, exposing how it participates in “sacred economies of violence” and “gendered theological necropolitics”. These frameworks help us understand how religion and empire sacralise harm and render certain bodies disposable.
The talk will explore three central themes:
- The invisibilisation and exploitation of the unnamed virgins in Esther’s harem.
- Esther’s transformation from vulnerable exile to agent of imperial violence.
- The enduring ideological power of the Amalekite trope in justifying annihilation.
Professor Nadar will read selected excerpts and reflect on the book’s ethical and political stakes, particularly in relation to the genocide in Gaza and the mobilisation of biblical texts to sanction violence today.
A Q&A session will follow, inviting critical engagement with how sacred texts shape social ethics and how alternative interpretations might resist complicity in violence.
Please register your attendance by clicking here.
