October 2025 Book Talk: Gender, Genocide, Gaza and the Book of Esther
Book Talk: Gender, Genocide, Gaza and the Book of Esther
🗓 Date: Monday, 13 October 2025
🕐 Time: 13:00 – 14:30
📍 Venue: Social Sciences Building, Room 12.21/12.25
🎤 Speaker: Professor Sarojini Nadar, Desmond Tutu Research Chair, University of the Western Cape
Bio: Sarojini Nadar holds the Desmond Tutu Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her research focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and violence, with particular attention to how epistemic, sexual, and physical forms of violence are mediated through religious discourse and practice. Her work is transdisciplinary, engaging critical questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality within theological and religion studies.
How do sacred texts legitimise violence?
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) (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 scanning the QR code on the attached poster or clicking here: https://forms.office.com/e/2RQeKNLZGe
We look forward to welcoming you to this important discussion.