Some
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Works
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I put these abstracts together to give a good sense of the themes and ideas my scholarship has explored so far. From hybridity and identity in exile (Esther) to the politics of memory and erasure (Amalek) and the performance of knowledge under empire (Daniel), what emerges across these abstracts is a through-line: the Bible as a site where identity, memory, and knowledge are contested, concealed, and reimagined.
Abstracts
Published work
“Hiding in Exile: Rereading Esther’s Identity and Assessing its Missional Implications for Africans in the Diaspora in Light of Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity Theory.” Journal of African Christian Thought, a publication by Akrofi Christaller Institute of Theology of Mission, Ghana. Vol. 25. No. December 2022
In this paper, I re-present Esther’s concealed identity through Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, arguing that her silence on “Jewishness” reflects the complexity of being both Judean and Persian rather than simple assimilation as is commonly argued. Seen then as a cultural hybrid, Esther’s hiddenness becomes a strategic resource that unsettles binaries of resistance and accommodation. For African diasporans, this rereading offers a missional paradigm where hybridity serves as a powerful way of inhabiting “in-between” spaces, resisting erasure while successfully engaging multiple cultural worlds.
Select works in progress
“Remembering to Forget: The Paradox of Memory and Erasure in Exodus 17:14 and the Amalek Narratives” SBL Conference 2025
This paper explores the paradox of memory in the Amalek narratives, where Israel is commanded both to erase and to remember. Exodus 17:14 and Deuteronomy 25:17–19 reveal that the very act of erasure preserves Amalek’s memory, while 1 Samuel shows how this tension shapes Israel’s identity and Saul’s downfall. I am interested in how “forgetting” in the Hebrew Bible is never simple absence but a strategy of controlled remembrance, a way of regulating history through writing. For me, Amalek becomes a case study in the politics of knowledge, showing how the literature constructs who may be remembered and who must be forgotten.
“Daniel as an Epistemic Trickster – Knowledge, Performance, and Power in Daniel 2.” SBL
Conference, 2024.
I begin in this project with trickster figures—Eshu, Anansi, Hermes—to frame Daniel in chapter 2 as a strategist who survives empire by managing how knowledge appears. He is not quite a passive vessel of divine revelation but a trickster of sorts. I argue that Daniel performs knowledge: he stages it, times it, and directs its reception to satisfy Nebuchadnezzar while unsettling imperial certainty.
Select presented work
“Hiding in Exile: Reading Esther’s Identity.” Presented at Columbia Hebrew Bible Conference, Union Theological Seminary, New York, 2024. Jointly presented with my colleague Hatty Lee
Co-written with my colleague Hatty Lee, we explore Esther’s hidden identity through two lenses: postcolonial theory and moral philosophy. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, we read Esther as both Jewish and Persian, a cultural hybrid whose concealment makes sense in exile. We then shift to the “tragic question,” asking whether Esther’s fateful decision—“If I perish, I perish”—is framed less as free moral choice than as a constrained response shaped by rhetoric and reception. Together, these approaches open new ways of thinking about Esther’s identity, agency, and the demands placed on her.