Castañeda-Jennings Lecture 2025

Greeting – Dr. Scott Haldeman

Presidential Welcome – Pres. Brad Braxton

Securing the Castañeda Legacy – VP Chad Schwickerath

Centering Moment – Deb Behrendt (2024 Awardee)

Presentation of 2025 Castañeda-Jennings Scholarship Award – Dean Emily Vogt

Introduction of Keynote Speaker – Dr. Ken Stone

Transing the Talmud in Times of Crisis – Dr. Max Strassfeld

Q&A – Dr. Rachel Mikva

Join us on October 9th for the 170th Anniversary Celebration and C. Shelby Rooks Lecture!
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The 2025 Castañeda-Jennings Scholarship Awardee: Rev. Elle Dowd

Rev. Elle Dowd (she/they) is a bisexual pastor, author, activist, and PhD candidate at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where their research focuses on the revolutionary potential of an anti-capitalist bisexual theology. They are ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and bring a fierce commitment to the work of collective liberation across academic, ecclesial, and community spaces.

Elle’s life and theology are shaped by their deep ties to Sierra Leone, where their two children were born, and to St. Louis, where they were transformed by the radical, queer, Black leadership of the Ferguson Uprising. Their first book, Baptized in Teargas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist (Broadleaf Books, 2021), chronicles their journey into abolitionist praxis and public witness.

A co-conspirator with movements such as #decolonizeLutheranism, Elle has served on the board of the Euro-Descent Lutheran Association for Racial Justice, the Clergy Advocacy Board for Planned Parenthood, and currently organizes locally as a board member of SOUL (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation). They regularly facilitate workshops in both Christian and secular spaces on topics such as embodied spirituality, antiracism, queer theology, and faith-based community organizing.

Elle is the 2025 recipient of the Jennings-Castañeda Scholarship Award, which honors LGBTQ+ students who transform religious spaces from places of hostility to communities of hospitality and empowerment. In receiving this award, Elle recommits themself to costly solidarity rooted in queer resistance, abolitionist imagination, and the enduring belief that another world is not only possible—but already unfolding.

The Speaker: Dr. Max Strassfeld

Dr. Max Strassfeld is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies. Their research focuses on rabbinic literature, transgender studies, and Jewish studies. They hold a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University. Strassfeld’s book, Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, was published in 2022 by the University of California Press. The book was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and won the American Academy of Religion’s award for excellence in the category of textual studies. Dr. Strassfeld is Associate Editor at QTR: A Journal of Trans and Queer Studies in Religion

In times of extreme political crisis, characterized by rising fascism, white supremacy, and anti-trans animus, why turn to rabbinic literature? Within the current context, how is the history of gender variance in Judaism useful?

The 2025 Castañeda-Jennings Lecture will examine the politics of transing classical Jewish sources, including a discussion of the many sexed categories that are discussed throughout this literature. While these categories are not straightforwardly trans or intersex, our desire to see ourselves in history is both real and urgent in these political times. And yet, we can interrogate this demand for a “useful” past, in order to consider what a non-useful history, or a resistant transing, might produce in its stead. Dr. Strassfeld further discusses this topic along with in podcast-form on The Revealer, “Episode 29: Gender Diversity in Islam and Judaism”.