About
Kelse is broadly interested in the construction of gender in the cuneiform cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. Their topics of particular interest include human-animal relationships, the function of monsters in literature, and the reception of the ancient world in modern media. For this research, they interact with Assyriological literature in addition to queer theory, critical theory, and post-colonial theory.
They completed an MA at Brandeis University in a joint program between the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies departments and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. For this program, they wrote a thesis on the enigmatic figures of assinnu in Akkadian literature, people who perform a gender outside of expected binary constructions, additionally worked to untangle gender assumptions built into modern scholarly literature published on the assinnu.
The link to their thesis can be found here.
Kelsie is a dedicated scholar with a paper forthcoming in the proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East. This paper explores the association of dogs with complicit masculinities and their relationship to hegemonic masculinity in textual and artistic depictions of the Neo-Assyrian royal lion hunt and the baby-stealing demon Lamaštu from the first millennium.
Although focusing on Akkadian and Sumerian texts, Kelsie has established an interest in the archaeology of ancient Southwest Asia, completing four seasons of fieldwork in Israel/Palestine, at Tel Kabri, Megiddo, and Birsama. They are also interested in the entanglement of archaeology with political ideologies and colonization, in past and present contexts.
Outside of academic pursuits, Kelsie spends a lot of time listening to music, watching weird movies, and going on adventures with their very high-energy dog, Dusty!
