About the event:

Join us for a live conversation on zoom between Julia Watts Belser (she/her) and enfleshed co-directors Robert Monson (he/him) and Anna Blaedel (they/them) followed by an audience Q & A with the author.

There will be a live captioner for this event.

Please make sure to register here to receive the zoom link to this event.

About the book:

Loving Our Own Bones is a spiritual companion and political manifesto that cuts through objectification and inspiration alike to offer a powerful new account of disability in biblical narrative and contemporary culture.

Open the Bible and disability is everywhere. Moses stutters and thinks himself unable to answer God’s call. Isaac’s blindness lets his wife trick him into bestowing his blessing on his younger son. Jesus heals the sick, the blind, the paralyzed, and the possessed. For centuries, biblical stories referencing disability have been told and retold by commentators who treat disability as misfortune.

Acclaimed queer, disabled scholar and activist Julia Watts Belser turns that perspective on its head, offering fresh and un-expected readings of familiar biblical stories to provide a powerful, accessible introduction to the intersection of disability politics and spirituality. With both a lyrical love of tradition and incisive political analysis, Belser braids spiritual perspectives together with keen activist insights—inviting readers to claim the power and promise of spiritual dissent, to nourish their own souls through the revolutionary art of radical self-love.

About the author:

Julia Watts Belser is a rabbi, scholar, and spiritual teacher, as well as a longtime activist for disability, LGBTQ, and gender justice. She is a professor of Jewish studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program, and a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. She’s also an avid wheelchair hiker and a lover of wild places.