Race and Ethnicity in New Testament and Early Christian Studies: A Symposium

March 23-25, 2007

The symposium will bring together scholars who attend to the important question of critical race studies in New Testament/Early Christian studies. This conference and its ensuing publication will seek to push scholarship forward in several directions. First, there is need for more theoretical discussion on critical race theory and the intersection of race with class, gender, and empire in the study of religion in general and in the study of the religions of antiquity in particular. Second, while classicists have investigated race and ethnicity in antiquity, there has been less scholarship specifically directed toward the topic in New Testament and Early Christian studies. The third, related desideratum is explicit conversation about the theoretical frameworks and methodologies by which New Testament and Early Christian studies might proceed in the analysis of race and ethnicity. New Testament studies are caught between the long-standing authority of the historical critical method—which would insist that such inquiry be limited to the first and early second century ce—and critical hermeneutics and cultural and literary studies that insist that all interpretation and reading is shaped by contemporary knowledge and sociopolitical locations. Moreover, the significant analyses of feminist, postcolonial, and critical race studies have developed alongside each other but have not been integrated to develop an intersectional analysis of early Christian literature and history. Last but not least, research is needed on the ideological work that biblical texts do with respect to racism today.

The opening panel is a public event; the rest of the conference is closed, except to invitees.

Opening Panel

Race, Gender, Ethnicity: Modern Categories of Analysis and Ancient Texts

Friday, March 23, 2007, 5 pm
Sperry Room, Andover Hall

A panel presentation and a discussion among some of our symposium participants, with a reception to follow in the Braun Room. The panelists will be: Denise Buell, Shelley Haley, Susannah Heschel, Fernando Segovia, and Vincent Wimbush.

Symposium Participants

Denise Kimber Buell

Seeking Transformation or Giving up the Ghost? Some Thoughts on Confronting the Specters of Racism in Early Christian Studies

Denise Kimber Buell, Associate Professor, Williams College, is author of Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity and Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy.

Sheila Briggs

Rethinking the Geography of Race in the Ancient World and Early Christianity

Sheila Briggs is Associate Profession of Religion, University of Southern California. Her research interests lie in feminist theology in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century (German) theology, early Christianity, theories of history and modern liberation movements. She has written extensively on ancient slavery and biblical interpretation.

Shelley Haley

Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies

Shelley Haley, Professor of Classics and Africana Studies, Hamilton College, is a contributor to the African American Women Writers Series, 1910-1940. She has lectured nationally and internationally on reshaping the discipline of classics from a black feminist perspective and on her research concerning the role of a classical education in the lives and careers of nineteenth-century college-educated black women.

Susannah Heschel

Theology's Fascination With Racial Theory: How Jesus Became a Nazi in German Protestantism

Susannah Heschel is Eli Black Professor in Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion, Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her monograph Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus won a National Jewish Book Award, and her forthcoming book is The Aryan Jesus: Christians, Nazis, and the Bible. She has edited a classic collection, On Being a Jewish Feminist.

Clarice Martin

"Race-ing" the Master Narrative: Critical Race Theory and the Academic Study of Religion

Clarice Martin is Jean Picker Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Colgate University. In addition to her books—Tongues of Fire: Power for the Church Today. Studies in the Acts of the Apostles; Pentecost 2: Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year; and For All Are One in Christ: The Unity and Diversity of the Body of Christ in Pauline Theology (Gal. 3:26-29)—she has written extensively on womanist theology, slavery, and the New Testament household codes.

Fernando Segovia

Latino/a American Criticism: Toward a Working Vision of Minority Biblical Criticism

Fernando Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Vanderbilt University, is author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View From the Margins (Orbis Books, 2000); editor of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections (T & T Clark, 2005); and co-editor of Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy (Orbis Books, 1998).

Shawn Kelley

Race, Aesthetics, and Gospel Scholarship: Embracing and Subverting the Aesthetic Ideology

Shawn Kelley, Associate Professor of Philosophy/Religious Studies, Daemen College, is author of Racializing Jesus: Race, Ideology, and the Formation of Modern Biblical Scholarship (Routledge, 2002).

Vincent Wimbush

". . . no modern Joshua . . . ": Nationalization, Scriptures, and Race

Vincent Wimbush, Professor of Religion and head of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures, Claremont Graduate School, is author of The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History (Augsburg Fortress, 2003) and editor of African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (Continuum, 2000, 2001).

Conference sponsor: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

Conference organizers: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School, and Laura Nasrallah, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Harvard Divinity School.