LOCATION
Borsch-Rast Book Prize Lecture by Julia Watts Belser
Description
The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is proud to present Dr. Julia Watts Belser (PhD ’08), who has been awarded the eighth annual Borsch-Rast Book Prize and Lectureship for her 2023 publication, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole (Beacon Press). Please join us online at 12:30 pm on Thursday, March 20th.
In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Belser offers a radical rethinking of disability in biblical literature and contemporary culture, challenging political and religious marginalization of disabled people. Through fresh interpretations of sacred texts, informed by disability studies, feminist theory, and her lived experiences as a queer, disabled, Jewish feminist, she invites readers to embrace disability as a source of spiritual wisdom and a catalyst for theological imagination.
"Disability wisdom can be liberating for all people, including those who don’t currently experience disability," Dr. Belser reflects. "So many of us are harmed by the tight confines of normativity. This book is an invitation to help us all get free and a call to honor the vibrant complexity of our bodies and lives as sacred ground."
Loving Our Own Bones delves into familiar biblical narratives—Moses, Jacob, and Ezekiel—and reframes them through the lens of disability. It critiques traditional portrayals that reduce disability to metaphor or challenge while offering a more expansive vision of God as one who intimately knows and embraces the realities of human vulnerability and interdependence.
Dr. Belser emphasizes that this work is deeply rooted in her experiences at the GTU: "My time at the GTU was formative for both my intellectual and spiritual life. Faculty like Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé, Rebecca Ann Parker, and Naomi Seidman helped me claim a theological imagination that brings activist fire to the sacred work of reimagining Jewish texts and traditions. This book would not have been possible without the tools and inspiration I found here."
Dr. Belser’s work in Loving Our Own Bones was also recently awarded the 2025 Grawemeyer Religion Award by Louisville Seminary. Loving Our Own Bones also received a National Jewish Book Award.
About the Borsch-Rast Book Prize
The Borsch-Rast selection committee also recognized Dr. Jeremiah Coogan, Assistant Professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and Core Doctoral Faculty at the GTU, with an Honorable Mention for his book Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press). Dr. Coogan’s work explores Eusebius of Caesarea’s innovative textual approaches to the Gospels, offering insights into technology and textuality in the ancient Mediterranean.
About the Borsch-Rast Book Prize
Established in 2016, the Borsch-Rast Book Prize and Lectureship honors exceptional theological scholarship by GTU graduates and faculty. This prestigious award, accompanied by a $10,000 prize, celebrates the collaborative legacy of Frederick Houk Borsch (1935–2017) and Harold W. Rast (1933–2004).
