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Return to SBL Committee Page
The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is committed to the support and professional development of its student members. In affirmation of this support, the Student Advisory Board (SAB, previously the Student Advisory Group) was officially launched at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society in Philadelphia, PA. The establishment and ongoing promotion of SAB testifies to the Society’s dedication to fostering student membership and participation in the activities of the Society.
SAB functions as a Board within the Society’s governance structure, and as such is composed of appointed individuals, both student members of the Society and a faculty liaison, who work to advise the SBL Council regarding issues and opportunities relating to student membership and participation in the Society as a whole. SAB also has as its core mandate the coordination of student participation across all Society activities, committees, and programs in an effort to foster opportunities for student participation and leadership development. In order to achieve this mandate, SAB works to encourage student attendance and active participation at regional, national, and international congresses, with a focus on paper presentations and professional skills development; to link SBL student membership to effective, working resources for skills advancement, facilitated through the development and maintenance of communication tools such as a webpage and newsletter; and to provide support in the development, review, and evaluation of SBL policies and procedures as relating to student membership and participation and to make recommendations, where appropriate, to SBL Council on these matters.
Please contact Natalie
Reynoso if you have questions or would like to volunteer to become an On-Campus Student Representative.
SAB Committee Members
Member
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Office
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Year of Service
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Years Appointed
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Camille Angelo
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Member at Large
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2
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2018–2020
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Michelle Eastwood
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International Representative
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1
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2019–2021
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Kirsty Jones
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Vice Chair
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2
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2018–2020
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LaToya Leary
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Regional Representative Coordinator
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1
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2020–2021
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Ian Mills
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Member at Large
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2
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2018–2020
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Sarah Porter
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Chair
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3
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2017–2020
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Natalie Reynoso
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On-Campus Representative Coordinator
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1
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2019–2021
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April Hoelke Simpson
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Technology Coordinator
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1
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2019–2021
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Angela Zautcke
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Project Manager
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2
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2018–2020
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Paige
Schmidt - Staff Liaison
Member Bios:
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Camille Leon Angelo is a PhD student in Ancient Christianity at Yale
University. Her work examines the body in late antique Christian cultural
discourse using an interdisciplinary approach drawn from art history,
archaeology, social history, and gender and sexuality studies. Currently,
Camille is analyzing the archaeological remains of several early Christian
sites in the eastern Mediterranean to elucidate patterns of ritual movement and
embodied worship practices in late antiquity. In her role as Member at
Large, Camille seeks to provide support to and develop programing for graduate
students. |
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Michelle Eastwood is a PhD candidate within the University of Divinity, Melbourne,
Australia, based at Catholic Theological College. She is developing a feminist
reading of Psalm 71, focusing on the key themes of ageing and shame.
Her big question is ‘what happens when we hear the biblical text spoken from a
female perspective?’ Michelle’s work is connected to her work at the Centre for
Human Ageing which is exploring ageing from the perspectives of theology,
spirituality, pastoral care and ethics. Her wider research interests are gender
and sexuality, liturgy and worship, and developing authentic Christian
community. She has a background in education, and her first degree is in
psychology and history. Michelle likes to bring diverse ideas together with a twist
to develop novel understandings of the biblical text. As the International
Representative on the SAB, she is pulling together a panel for ISBL in Adelaide
and hopes to bring a different perspective to discussions of the student
experience. |
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Kirsty Jones is a PhD
student at Georgetown University where she specializes in disability and the
senses in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Her work focuses on the use of
disability and sensory rhetoric, and the depictions of disability in the text.
In her role as Vice Chair she hopes to increase representation of and
participation by students in the SBL, to support students with disabilities to
participate as fully as they desire and to equip members to be cognizant of
accessibility issues in their work. Kirsty is excited to work with the SAB and
SBL teams to see change in the institute and academy for all students and
scholars. |
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LaToya Leary is a PhD
student in Religions of Western Antiquity at Florida State University. Her
research examines the treatment of various bodies in texts from the Hebrew
Bible, second temple period, and early Christian corpus in effort to consider
socially disabling states in antiquity and its role in identity formation. In
her role as Regional Representative Coordinator, LaToya aids in effective
communication between SBL Regional Coordinators and Regional Representatives to
promote SBL events and to better serve the needs of graduate students. She
hopes to significantly improve communication between graduate students and SBL
student and governing boards and is eager to develop ideas that will assist the
Student Advisory Board in better advocating for graduate students. |
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Ian Mills is a PhD
candidate in New Testament at Duke University. He studies gospel literature,
focusing especially on the second century. In his role as Member at Large, Ian
is organizing a panel on publishing in graduate school and cooperating in the
management of the SAB social media accounts. As an avowed lover of
academic conferences, Ian hopes to be part of making this potentially stressful
and challenging event a positive experience for more graduate
students. |
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Sarah Porter is a
PhD candidate in New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard
University with a secondary field in Archaeology. Her research centers on early
Christian funerary and memorial contexts, particularly with attention to urban
planning, landscape, sense, the body, and affect, and her dissertation examines
these themes in fourth-century Antioch. She is also interested in spatial,
queer, and affect theory more generally; cultural heritage; and the teaching
strategies of contemporary public spaces like museums. As Chair, Sarah works to
manage the interests of graduate students by liaising with the Society of
Biblical Literature, organizing student-centered programming at the annual
meeting, and supporting the work of the other board members in their work with
technological, regional, and on-campus presence and outreach. |
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Natalie Reynoso is a PhD student in History of Christianity at Fordham University. Her
research examines connections between body, identity, and death; more
specifically, her work focuses on death as an embodied transition in early
Christian martyrdom narratives within the Syriac and Coptic traditions.
Natalie’s interrogation of early Christian thought avails itself of the tools
of critical theory, and particularly queer and gender theory to reconfigure the
relationship between two related conceptual constellations: body, identity, and
selfhood on the one hand; and sex, gender, and sexuality on the other. In her
role as On-Campus Student Representative Coordinator, Natalie maintains regular
communication with On-Campus Student Representatives and their respective
institutions in order to support OSRs in encouraging student participation in
annual and regional SBL meetings. In her time as OSR Coordinator, Natalie hopes
to help create a more expansive network and provide professional development
resources for SBL student members to benefit from. |
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April Hoelke Simpson is a PhD candidate in New Testament at Southern Methodist University.
She is writing her dissertation on the Gospel of Mark, focusing especially
on the latter chapters of the Gospel. April explores the ways in
which, through the narrative arc, Mark's author depicts Jesus as gaining,
losing, and regaining honor. Of particular importance to her project are
first-century CE notions of honor in the world of the Roman Empire, including
not only how honor was frequently defined within Roman culture but also the
ways in which such notions of honor were contested. As Technology
Coordinator, April works to promote student involvement in the SBL, bolster
awareness of such student involvement, and feature student-centered panels at
the Annual Meeting. |
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Angela Zautcke is a PhD student of Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity (New
Testament emphasis) at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests
focus on the gospels and how they have been influenced by Second Temple Judaism
and the broader Greco-Roman milieu. In her role as Project Manager, Angela
takes the minutes during SAB meetings and assists in other duties as needed,
such as organizing panels for the SBL Annual Meeting. She is excited to use her
role on the SAB to facilitate helpful professional development opportunities
for students, and to foster a collegial and supportive community of student
scholars that can carry over into their future careers.
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