Naomi Goldenberg

Naomi Ruth Goldenberg is a professor at the University of Ottawa. Her regular undergraduate courses include Gender and Religion, Women and Religions, Psychology of Religion and Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Goldenberg is best known for her work in the areas of Feminist Theory and Religion, Gender and Religion, as well as the Psychoanalytic Theory and Political Theory of Religion. She is one of the early members of the Women's Caucus at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature and continues to work on and support scholarship in areas of religion and feminism, psychoanalytic theory, women's issues, gender. Currently, Goldenberg is writing about understanding religions as vestigial states. Her theory demystifies religion in order to continue the feminist critique she articulated in her earlier work.

Early life and education
Born in 1947 in Brooklyn, New York, Naomi Ruth Goldenberg grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. She attended Teaneck High School and graduated with High Honors in Classics from Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1969. After beginning graduate work in Classics at Princeton University, she switched to Religious Studies at Yale University where she received an M.A. in 1974, an M.Phil. in 1975, and a Ph.D. in 1976. for her graduate work. Goldenberg studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland during her doctoral program.

Academic career
Goldenberg is a full professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa University of Ottawa where she has been employed since 1977. She served as Director of Women's Studies from 1989 to 1992. Her graduate and undergraduate courses cover topics related to psychoanalysis, politics, gender, popular culture and mythology.

Awards and honours
Goldenberg has received many honourable prizes and recognized for her work.


 * 1966 Cornelison Prize for Latin translation, Douglass College
 * 1967 Phi Beta Kappa Sophomore prize, Douglass College
 * 1968 Phi Beta Kappa, Douglass College
 * 1969-70 Woodrow Wilson Fellow and University Fellow, Princeton University
 * 1975-76 Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellow in Women's Studies, Yale University
 * 1980 Merit increase for excellence in teaching at the University of Ottawa
 * 2004 William C. Bier Award, American Psychological Association
 * 2004 Excellence in Education Prize, University of Ottawa

Books

 * Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (1979)
 * The End of God (1982)
 * Returning Words to Flesh: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Resurrection of the Body (1990)
 * Resurrecting the Body: Feminism, Religion and Psychoanalysis (1993)
 * Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (2007, editor)
 * Religion As a Category of Governance and Sovereignty (2015, editor, with Trevor Stack and Timothy Fitzgerald)

Journal articles

 * "Theorizing Religions as Vestigial States in Relation to Gender and Law: Three Cases"
 * "A Gentle Critique of Mourning Religion"
 * "What's God Got to do with it? A call for problematizing Basic Terms in the Feminist Analysis of Religion"
 * "Thought on the 20th Birthday of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion"
 * "Witched and Words"
 * "Memories of Marija Gimbutas and the King's Archaeologist
 * "Interview"