Berkley Center

Julia Watts Belser is an associate professor in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. She previously taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. Her work in Jewish studies focuses on Talmud, rabbinic literature, and Jewish ethics. An ordained rabbi, Watts Belser writes queer feminist Jewish theology and brings disability culture into conversation with Jewish tradition. Watts Belser previously held a research fellowship in women’s studies and religion at Harvard Divinity School and taught in Missouri State University's Religious Studies Department. She is the author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (2015). She serves on the board of the Society for Jewish Ethics and holds leadership positions in the American Academy of Religion. She is also a board member of Nehirim, a national community of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews and allies. Watts Belser has a B.A. from Cornell University, M.Div. from the Graduate Theological Union, M.A. from the Academy for Jewish Religion California, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union.