Cathleen Chopra-McGowan
Cathleen Chopra-McGowan received her BA in Theology from Boston College (2010) and her MA in Hebrew Bible from Yale Divinity School (2013). In 2019, she received her PhD at the University of Chicago. She has taught courses at the University of Chicago and Loyola University, Chicago, and joined the Santa Clara faculty in 2020. Dr. Chopra-McGowan's research focuses on biblical literature within its ancient Near Eastern milieu, particularly on literary representations of imperial ideology and military defeat. She also studies Hindu sacred epics and their afterlives in contemporary political systems in India. Currently, she is writing her first book on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Using a multidisciplinary approach that draws on gender and memory studies, and literary criticism, she teaches a variety of courses on the ancient Near East, biblical literature, archaeology, ancient languages, and contemporary uses of the bible in political and civil society.