Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Chair of the Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature Section and Steering Committee Member of the Deuteronomy Section at the Society of Biblical Literature
Office: BUCH C 205
Phone: 604–822–4058
Email: sara.milstein@ubc.ca
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Sara Milstein is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies. She is the author of Making a Case: The Practical Roots of Biblical Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature (Oxford University Press), which earned the Frank Moore Cross Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2017; and co-author with Daniel Fleming of The Buried Foundation of the Gilgamesh Epic: The Akkadian Huwawa Narrative (Brill). A graduate of Bates College (B.A. in English), City College of New York (M.A. in Secondary Education in English) and New York University (M.A./Ph.D. in Hebrew and Judaic Studies), she has been the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (2009-2010, 2012-2013), the Killam Foundation (2017), and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (2018-2019). In 2016, she was the recipient of the Killam Teaching Prize. In 2021, she was awarded a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship for her new project, titled Lost in Translation: Gender, Ambiguity, and Biblical “Errancy”.
Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship (KARF), Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund, 2021-2023
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Exchange Arts Workshop Grant, with Reinhard Mueller, “Making a Case: The Origins and Legacy of Biblical and Near Eastern Law” (2020-2021)
SSHRC Insight Grant, “Making a Case: The Origins and Legacy of Biblical and Near Eastern Law” (2019-2021)
SSHRC Connection Grant, “The Emergent Legal Mind in the Ancient Middle East” (2019-2020)
Peter Wall Special Projects Fund, “The Emergent Legal Mind in the Ancient Middle East” (2019-2020)
Peter Wall Institute, Special Projects Fund (with Jessica Dempsey, Malabika Pramanik, and Anna Casas-Aguilar), “Building the 1.5 Degree UBC: Reducing Work-Related Aviation Emissions” (2019)
Arts Undergraduate Research Award (AURA), UBC Faculty of Arts, “Making a Case: The Emergent Legal Imagination in the Ancient Near East” (2018, 2016)
American Schools of Oriental Research Frank Moore Cross Award (for Tracking the Master Scribe, 2017). This award is presented to the editor/author of the most substantial volume(s) related to one of the following categories: a) the history and/or religion of ancient Israel; b) ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean epigraphy; c) textual studies on the Hebrew Bible; or d) comparative studies of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature.
Killam Teaching Prize (university-wide teaching prize, 2017)
SSHRC, Insight Development Grant, “Nothing but the Truth: Near Eastern Scribes and the Production of Legal ‘Opinions’” (2015-2018)
Hampton Grant, “Making a Case: The Impact of Mesopotamian ‘Lawsuits’ on the Hebrew Bible” (2014-2017)
Ephraim Urbach Postdoctoral Fellowship, “Scribal Exchange in the Ancient Near East: Textual Revision in New Settings” (2012-2013)
Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship, “Revamping Ancient Texts: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Narratives” (2010-2011)
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Scholarship, “Reworking Ancient Texts: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature” (2009-2010)
Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship, “Reworking Ancient Texts: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature” (2009-2010)