{"id":252,"date":"2015-08-31T11:47:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/cynthia-m-baker-2\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T12:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T17:08:14","slug":"cynthia-m-baker","status":"publish","type":"faculty-profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/profile\/cynthia-m-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynthia M. Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ph.D., Duke; M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School; B.A., Wesleyan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutgersuniversitypress.org\/jew\/9780813563022\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-755\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/religious-studies\/files\/2010\/07\/9780813563022-2-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Jew\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>Professor Baker\u00a0teaches a wide range of courses including: Religion, Violence, and Nonviolence; Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Eve, Adam, and the Serpent; Jews and Judaism in Antiquity; History of Early Christianity; Human Suffering: Job, Genesis, Revelation; Gender and Judaism; The Nature of Spirituality; Biblical Criticism; Food and the Sacred; and Images of Jesus in Film.<\/p>\n<p>Her research explores ideas about gender, race\/ethnicity, and nationalism in the formative periods of Judaism and Christianity and in modern historiography on these periods. \u00a0Her recent book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutgersuniversitypress.org\/jew\/9780813563022\"><em><strong>Jew<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em> is the focus of a <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org\/introduction-forum-on-cynthia-baker-jew\/\"><em><strong>Marginalia: Los Angeles Review of Books<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> Forum<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em> and was highlighted in a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/22\/opinion\/reclaiming-jew.html\"><em><strong>New York Times<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> Op-Ed<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em> in April 2017.\u00a0 It has been called \u201cA rewarding and important book\u201d and \u201cHighly Recommended\u201d by the American Library Association.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When not in her office she can often be found foraging about the woods for wild gourmet mushrooms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":770,"featured_media":3063,"template":"","class_list":["post-252","faculty-profile","type-faculty-profile","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","expertise-early-christian-studies","expertise-gender-and-religion","expertise-historiography-of-religion","expertise-jewish-studies","expertise-specific-early-rabbinic-judaism","expertise-specific-feminist-and-queer-theory","expertise-specific-gender-and-religion-in-the-late-ancient-mediterranean-and-middle-east","expertise-specific-material-culture-and-historiography-of-jews-and-judaism","expertise-specific-new-testament","expertise-specific-the-bible","what-i-teach-early-christian-studies","what-i-teach-gender-and-religion","what-i-teach-historiography-of-religion","what-i-teach-jewish-studies","what-i-teach-religion-and-environment","what-i-teach-specific-biblical-theology-and-ethics","what-i-teach-specific-critical-historiography","what-i-teach-specific-early-christianity","what-i-teach-specific-early-judaism","what-i-teach-specific-gender-in-judaism-and-christianity","what-i-teach-specific-human-suffering","what-i-teach-specific-new-testament","what-i-teach-specific-sacred-food-practices","what-i-teach-specific-the-bible"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faculty-profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/770"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7278,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-profile\/252\/revisions\/7278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}