Annette Yoshiko Reed

Annette Yoshiko Reed (born 1973) is an American religious historian. She holds the Krister Stendahl Chair at Harvard Divinity School. Reed's research interests span the topics of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity, with particular attention to retheorizing religion, identity, difference, and forgetting. She is the daughter of political scientist Steven Reed and his wife Michiko Konishi.

Career Reed began her teaching career in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University (2003–2007) before moving to the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2007–2017). During her time at the University of Pennsylvania, she served as coordinator of the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins as well as Director of the Center for Ancient Studies. She has held multiple fellowships at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. In 2017, she joined the faculty of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies at NYU. In July 2021, she joined Harvard University's Divinity School.

Personal life In addition to her scholarship, she is a certified kettlebell instructor and Muay Thai fighter, who won the American Thai Boxing Association (TBA) championship in her age/weight division in 2023. In an interview, she credited training and fighting with improving her university teaching. She has spoken on women and boxing in an event with poet Raisa Tolchinsky.

Reed is a member of the editorial board of the book series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism (TSAJ). In 2018, she delivered the Taubman Lecture Series at the University of California, Berkeley. Her 2020 monograph, Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism, was a finalist for the Jewish Book Council's Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award. In 2020, she was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for her project, "Forgetting: Retheorizing the Ancient Jewish Past and its Jewish and Christian Reception."

Reed has written for Salon, Religion Dispatches, and The Immanent Frame. She has also spoken about her work at the Franklin Institute. Reed is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

Select works

Publications Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (with John Reeves). Oxford: Oxford University, 2018. Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism: Collected Essays. TSAJ 171. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Paperback reprint: Fortress, 2022. Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Edited volumes

Envisioning Judaism: Essays in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. Edited with Ra’anan S. Boustan, Klaus Herrmann, Reimund Leicht, and Giuseppe Veltri, with the collaboration of Alex Ramos. 2 vols. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013

Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity. Edited with Natalie B. Dohrmann. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Blood and the Boundaries of Jewish and Christian Identities in Late Antiquity. Edited with Raʻanan S. Boustan. Henoch 30.2 (2008).

Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions. Edited with Raʻanan S. Boustan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Edited with Adam H. Becker. TSAJ 95. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Paperback reprint: Fortress, 2005.