Tracy Lemos

T. M. Lemos is a historian of violence and a religion scholar.  She is Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute and Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies.  Originally trained in biblical studies and the ancient history of Israel/Palestine, her research has turned in the past decade to the comparative history of violence and genocide studies.  She has published on dehumanization, rituals of violence, gender and violence--focusing especially on masculinity--and how violence relates to and produces social hierarchies of various kinds.  Her first book, Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE (Cambridge, 2010) addressed changes in marriage practices and social structure in ancient Palestine from the Iron Age to the Roman Era, while her second, Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts (Oxford, 2017) examined the intersections of dehumanizing violence, masculinity, and personhood in ancient Israel.  She is currently writing a book on rehumanization in the Hebrew Bible.  In addition, she has co-edited three volumes, including the first volume of the Cambridge World History of Genocide. Lemos is also interested in the history of kinship and family and has begun a collaborative project with the anthropologist Andrea S. Allen exploring the development of new forms of kinship in queer communities in contemporary Canada and the United States.