Jennifer Glancy, Ph.D.

Jennifer A. Glancy is The Rev. Kevin G. O’Connell, S.J., Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities. A 2018 Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, her current book project pairs investigation of early Christian understandings of slavery and twenty-first century debates about what makes us human, a project previously supported by a 2017 Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is the author of Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2010), Slavery as Moral Problem: In the Early Church and Today (Facets; Fortress, 2011), Slavery in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2002, a History Book Club alternate selection; paperback edition Fortress Press, 2006), and dozens of scholarly articles and chapters. Her research interests extend to the cultural history of early Christianity, corporeality and Christian anthropology, women’s history in antiquity, gender theory, and comparative studies of slavery.

As Le Moyne’s inaugural McDevitt Core Professor, Glancy coordinated a multidisciplinary speaker series in conjunction with a senior Core course on “The Future of Being Human.” She received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions grant program to develop another Core course, “What does prayer do?” In all her courses, she encourages students to ask their own enduring questions. After completing an Honors degree in Philosophy and English Literature at Swarthmore College, Glancy joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (1982-1983) before undertaking doctoral studies in New Testament at Columbia University, which she completed under the direction of the late Rev. Raymond E. Brown, S.S.

Glancy has served as the Catholic Biblical Association Visiting Professor at L’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem (2004), George & Sallie Cutchin Camp Professor of Bible at the University of Richmond (2008-2010), and, at Le Moyne, as Georg Professor (2000-2003). At Le Moyne she has been honored as both Teacher of the Year and Scholar of the Year. She is past co-chair of the National Steering Committee for Justice in Jesuit Higher Education; has been a member of the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education; and her service on editorial boards includes several terms on the boards of both Catholic Biblical Quarterly and the Journal of Biblical Literature.