Scholarship and Biography
Madadh Richey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Department of Middle Eastern Studies, she taught briefly at Princeton University.
Her book, Visions of Gods and Monsters: Divine Combat in Ancient Middle Eastern Art and Society (Oxford University Press, 2027) examines social contexts and functions of divine-combat images in the visual culture of Mesopotamia and the Levant during the Iron Age (ca. 1175–550 BCE). More information can be found here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/visions-of-gods-and-monsters-9780197815298.
Madadh is interested in the semiotics of animality, monstrosity, wilderness, and nature, especially as these rubrics have intersected with ancient Middle Eastern art and literature; this includes exploration in the Romantic and Orientalist aesthetic paradigms forged by 18th- and 19th-century writers (especially Anglophone) studying and imagining the ancient Middle East.
In addition to her visual culture work, Madadh has been active as an epigrapher of late-second- and first-millennium B.C.E. texts in Northwest Semitic languages, with primary publications of newly discovered inscriptions in Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Punic, and Ugaritic. Since 2023, she has written the biennial Chronique épigraphique for Judaïsme ancien (Brepols), and she co-chaired the "Ancient Inscriptions" standing session at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) from 2020 to 2025. She is currently the Associate Editor of Maarav: A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures (University of Chicago Press).
*Researchers please note: The listing of publications ("Scholarship") on this page is not exhaustive, and the automated ScholarWorks system often pulls and posts incorrect or misleading metadata, especially for edited volumes or online preprint "publications." Managing this is not a process I find intuitive or that I prioritize, so please continue to rely for bibliographic information on print and directly accessed e-publications. Please also feel free to request a current full listing of publications and any offprints not otherwise accessible to you from me at Madadh Richey, Brandeis University MS 054 415 South Street Waltham MA 02453 or richey@brandeis.edu.
Profile image: Robert Clive, flanking lions at the north entrance to the Temple of Ninurta at Nimrud (Clive 1852a-c, pl. 11, from Clayden 2020 Fs Reade: 267f fig. 11).