John Mandsager teaches and writes about Late Antique Jewish literature, practices, materiality, and history, with particular focus on Jewish spaces in Roman Palestine. His teaching and research emphasize questions of space, gender, class, materiality, interpretation, religious practice, and religious innovation. 
 
He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2014, and has taught in the Jewish Studies Program and the Religious Studies Department as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Instructor, and Assistant Professor. 
 
He is currently completing his first book, Agricultural Space, Visuality, and Performance in Early Rabbinic Judaism. In this book, he will show the importance of the agricultural estate as an ideal for the lives and identities of Jewish men. Through innovative interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, the early rabbis idealize the garden, the vineyard, and the grain field. Each area of the estate has its own material and ritual concerns: adherence to rabbinic prescriptions would create a visually unique Jewish world. 
 
Courses 
RELG 101 – Exploring Religion 
RELG 205 – Morality, Ethics, and Religion 
RELG/JSTU 230 – Introduction to Judaism 
RELG 270 – Religion and the Arts 
RELG/JSTU 301 – Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) 
RELG 321 – Hebrew Bible Prophets 
RELG/WGST 333 – Sex, Gender, and Religion 
RELG 339 – Law and Religious Traditions 
RELG/JSTU/HIST 381 – Jewish History I: Late Antiquity to 1500 
 
Select publications 
 “A Tale of Two Fathers: Space and Leadership in the Origin Story of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus.” Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity. 2022. (pdf) 
“Agriculture and Industry.” A Companion to Jews and Judaism in the Late Antique World, 3rd Century BCE – 7th Century CE. Edited by Gwynn Kessler and Naomi Koltun-Fromm. Wiley Blackwell. 2020. (pdf) 
Travel, the Inn, and Identity in Rabbinic Storytelling.” Symposia 3 (2011): 70-88. Online.