Good day, Feministe readers! My name is Sam, I blog at the Xyre, and I am absolutely tickled as punch to be guest blogging here for the next two weeks. The guest bloggers so far this summer have been terrific writers with some interesting things to say, and I hope I can live—or at least blog—up to their examples.
Obligatory, extremely condensed information about me: I am a twenty-odd single queer Jewish MTF living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where I am a grad student by day and multi-interested nerd by night, or whenever I have time left over. The word in days gone by for someone achieved in a wide variety of subjects was polymath, but for the most part, my achievements are as yet mere aspirations.
My major area of interest is ancient religion and the development of religions, which is essentially my primary topic of research in grad school. I am especially interested in ancient Israelite religion, early Rabbinic Judaism, the birth of Christianity, and the interactions between these latter two and Hellenistic philosophy (especially Stoicism) in the greater Greco-Roman world in the first few centuries of the Common Era. But I also sustain interests in technology and open-source programming, current politics, ancient and modern languages, public transportation systems, and basically anything else. Yeah, I’m easy. If it’s interesting—which pretty much everything is—then I’m interested in it.
I’m planning a number of posts on sexuality and gender in Judaism, from both religious and cultural perspectives, with a special focus on gender identity as an emerging issue that mainstream Judaism has not really dealt with at all yet. But for the most part I’m more or less going to take the next few weeks as they come, and write about whatever strikes my fancy when my fancy is struck. Interesting things have been tending to happen with great abandon in my life recently—I just got back from a long road trip around the United States and Canada—so I’m thinking that this isn’t going to be a problem.
In closing for right now, let me extend my welcome to the other current guest bloggers, as well as my thanks to Jill and the rest of the Feministe crowd for this opportunity!