Thomas Woodward

PhD Student
Photo: Thomas Woodward

Contact Information

Area
Religions of Western Antiquity
Graduate Student
Office Location
112 DOD

BACKGROUND

Before beginning the PhD program in Religions of Western Antiquity at Florida State University’s Department of Religion, I earned an MA (2019) from Wake Forest University’s Department for the Study of Religion and a BA (2017) from FSU in Religion and Classics with honors in the major. Through these programs, I received extensive training in ancient languages (Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic) and in theories of the study of religion. My work focuses on the production of theory as knowledge, by both contemporary and ancient theorists. Particularly, my current research examines theories of laughter from ancient Mediterranean communities.

My dissertation, supervised by Dr. Matthew Goff, examines the theorization of laughter by Hellenistic and Roman Jewish communities. I investigate how Jewish sources describe laughter in order to suggest implicit theorization of what laughter is and what it does. Ultimately, I ask what these theories do for their theorists. What does the Stoic vision of laughter seen in 4 Maccabees do for the community that produced it? How does Philo’s understanding of laughter and modesty shift the blame for anti-Jewish violence in Alexandria away from Romans and onto Egyptians? This dissertation advocates for a shift from “what’s funny?,” or worse “would Freud/Bakhtin/whoever think this is funny?,” to “what does ‘what does laughter do?’ do?”

In addition to my research and teaching, I have organized assorted events at FSU, including the Religion Graduate Student Symposium (Co-Director 2023, Treasurer 2022), a roundtable on publishing in the study of religion (2021), and a series of workshops on distance pedagogy (2020). 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS 

  • “Attached Critique: Paranoid and Reparative Studies of Religion” in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Forthcoming (available in advance publication online).
  • “Obscenity and Euphemism | Judaism | Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception Online. Edited by Constance M. Furey, Joel Marcus LeMon, Thomas Chr. Römer, Jens Schröter, Barry Dov Walfish and Eric Ziolkowski. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/ebr.obscenityandeuphemism

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Laughter in Hellenistic Judaism and the Ancient Mediterranean
  • Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient Mediterranean
  • Critique and the Postcritical in the Study of Religion

COURSES TAUGHT

  • REL1300: Introduction to World Religions
  • REL 2210: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
  • REL 2240: Introduction to the New Testament
  • REL 3145: Religion and Gender