Joseph J. Cross

Joseph J. Cross

I research the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Egyptian literature. Interested in the poetics of ancient literature and its political unconscious. PhD Chicago, 2022.

Joseph Cross Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley

I appreciate your interest in who I am!

I am a humanist specializing in ancient Mediterranean literature, in particular the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Egyptian literature.

I received my PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 2022. From 2022-2026, I was a researcher at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, studying the poetics of storytelling in Judean and Egyptian prose fiction from the Persian and Hellenistic periods with the European Research Council-funded project From Texts to Literature: Demotic Egyptian Papyri and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible (DEMBIB).

Previously to working in Berlin, I was a Public Outreach and Content Specialist for the Education Department of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago from 2015-2020, where I taught continuing education courses, gave public lectures on the Ancient Near East throughout the Chicago area, and provided expertise for the museum’s docent program. Additionally, I conducted research for the Chicago Demotic Dictionary and for the Critical Editions for Digital Analysis and Research project at ISAC. From 2016-2018, I taught in the Writing Program at the University of Chicago. From 2018-2020, at the University of North Carolina Asheville, I taught in the Dept. of Classics and in the Humanities Program.

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