Sex and Slaughter in the Tent of Jael

In the biblical story of Jael and Sisera (Judges 4-5), the heroic Jael takes a tent peg and nails the Canaanite general Sisera's head to the ground, thus saving Israel. Colleen Conway analyzes re-imaginings of this story across the centuries, in visual art, poems, plays, and novels, and shows how the cultural productions of an ancient biblical story intersect with broader conversations about the often conflicted, and sometimes violent, relationship between the sexes.