Nancy C. Lee

Nancy C. Lee, Ph.D. (1961- ) teaches at Elmhurst University near Chicago where she is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Religious Studies. Her newest book is Song of Songs and Lamentations Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (2023). She is also the author of Hannevi'ah and Hannah: Hearing Women Biblical Prophets in a Women's Lyrical Tradition (Wipf & Stock, 2015), a groundbreaking study that identifies, for the first time in modern history, a distinctive signature in the Hebrew of women's represented compositions in the Bible. A Kindle book, Hebrew Sound Patterns and Women's Biblical Composing (2014, rev. 2015), presents color-coded charts showing oral sound patterns in non-prophetic biblical texts. Lee is also the author of The Singers of Lamentations: Cities under Siege, from Ur to Jerusalem to Sarajevo . . . (Brill, 2002). This was a comparative study of the biblical book of Lamentations to lament poems from a recent context--the focus of a Fulbright fellowship in Croatia (and Bosnia-Herzegovinia) the year after the wars there ended in the 1990s. She edited a volume of war poetry in English from that context by Borislav Arapović, Between Despair and Lamentation (2002). Founding co-chair of the Lament in Sacred Texts & Cultures group of the Society of Biblical Literature, she co-edited the volume, Lamentations in Ancient & Contemporary Contexts (SBL, 2008), a collection from scholars worldwide. Her book, Lyrics of Lament: From Tragedy to Transformation (Fortress, 2010), is for a more general audience and surveys lament in poetry and popular song in 30 cultures worldwide while examining forms of lament in the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions (Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Qur'an). She has contributed essays to the international multi-volume series, The Bible and Women, An Encyclopaedia of Exegesis and Cultural History. Lee has regularly co-led student groups to South Africa with partners there in service-learning projects for 20 years. She was Founding Director of the Niebuhr Center at Elmhurst University (where the Niebuhrs were undergrads) and its 'Callings for the Common Good' program.