30.11.2023

Willkommen am CRCS: Dr. Marika Pulkkinen

Das CRCS begrüßt Dr. Marika Pulkkinen als CRCS-Fellow an der Universität Tübingen. Bis August 2024 wird die Postdoktorandin der University of Helsinki in Tübingen leben und forschen.

I hold a PhD in Theology in the field of Biblical Studies (June 2020, University of Helsinki) and I have specialized in Pauline studies, Septuagint Studies, and Psalms Studies. My research expertise has evolved from my PhD project by taking into account a broader set of sources (The prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible/the Septuagint; Graeco-Roman sources, Dead Sea Scrolls) as well as multidisciplinary methods (emotions studies, affect theories). To enhance the expertise required to accomplish my project, I have networked with leading scholars in the relevant fields: during the calendar year 2022, I worked as a visiting scholar and an associate member of the ERC-project Honour in Classical Greece (2018–2023) at the University of Edinburgh (http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/honour-in-greece/).

My study Evoking Shame, Honor, Desire, and Disgust through Vocabulary of Sex Work in the Ancient Jewish Sources and in the New Testament applies new perspectives of emotion studies, affect theories, and sociological understanding of sex work to examine the affect-laden vocabulary of sex work in the biblical texts. Both in antiquity and in contemporary societies, sex work is often referred to in either mystified and/or stigmatized manner in literature, popular culture, and political debates by means of evoking certain emotions. My study scrutinizes what kind of emotions are related to the sex work vocabulary and how the biblical writers make use of the provoked emotions.

Since my research project employs multidisciplinary methods and sources, the Center for Religion, Culture, and Society is an ideal environment to be in an active and inspiring contact with scholars from other fields related to my project: social scientists, historians, as well as scholars from literature and cultural studies. Moreover, the CRCS offers me an excellent environment to investigate the interrelations between societal changes of ancient cultures and how these changes are reflected in the textual sources from the given periods. In addition, during my visit in Tübingen, I work as an associate member of Prof. Holger Zellentin’s ERC project The Qur’an as a Source for Late Antiquity (QaSLA

, www.qasla.eu/home). This collaboration enables me to sharpen my methodology to pursue diachronic study.