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May 2000
Visiting Fellows
Named for 2000-01
Contact: Wendy
McDowell, 617.496.6004
The
Center for the Study of Values in Public Life has named four visiting fellows
for the 2000-2001 academic year; they are Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Mary Hunt,
Bill McKibben, and Julie Nelson. The Women’s Studies in Religion Program has named five
such fellows, who
are referred to as visiting lecturers and research associates; they are Sidnie
White Crawford, Sue Houchins, Oyeronke Olajubu, Tracy Pintchman, and Traci West.
Gobodo-Madikizela, who was recently a visiting fellow at the
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy in the Kennedy School of Government, spent
three years as a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa. After her year at the Divinity School, she will return to South Africa to become director of reconciliation at the Institute
for Justice and Reconciliation. She will use her time at the Center for the
Study of Values in Public Life to complete And
the Brokenhearted Shall be Healers, a book that makes use of political
theory and psychology to examine the dynamic of forgiveness.
Hunt is a
co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology,
Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Maryland and an adjunct member of the faculty of the
Women’s Studies Program at Georgetown University. Her publications include the books
Fierce
Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (1991), From Woman-Pain to Woman-Vision: Writings in Feminist Theology
(1989),
and Las fida del femminismo alla teologia: The Challenge of Feminism to Theology (1980), edited with Rosino
Gibellini.
She will spend her year at the center investigating how activism on issues
such as same-sex marriage and the open participation of homosexuals and
lesbians in the military can reinforce patriarchal structures by forcing
activists to embrace social institutions rather than challenging them.
McKibben is a writer and activist who has been a leader in the
environmental movement for the last 10 years. His groundbreaking book The
End of Nature (1989) has been published in 19 languages. He is also the author of
Hundred
Dollar Holiday: The Case for a more Joyous Christmas (1998), Maybe
One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Smaller Families (1998), and
The
Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation (1994). His articles have appeared in
The
New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The
Christian Century. At the
center, he will investigate how communities of faith can respond to the global-warming crisis and perhaps offer the most
effective route into a complex debate that raises the deepest questions of
human identity and justice.
Nelson is an associate professor of economics at the University of
Massachusetts. Her publications on the relationship between economics and
feminism include Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (1993), edited
with Marianne A. Ferber. She will spend her year at the center writing a book on the relationship between
questions of knowledge and questions of value, particularly in regard to the issue of
“caring labor.” She is
interested in improving the quality of intellectual policy debates in
economics, and in constructing a more ethically adequate economics.
Crawford, who is
chair of the classics and religious
studies department at the University of Nebraska, will be visiting lecturer and research associate in Hebrew Bible.
She will be working on “Making Women Visible: What the Dead Sea Scrolls Say About
Women,” a study of texts from Qumran that
illuminate the legal and social standing of women in Second Temple Judaism.
Houchins, who teaches at Union Institute, will be visiting lecturer and
research
associate in religion and society. Her project, “Conjuring Identities: Religious Representations of Black Lesbian Women,” is an analysis of the
relationship between African diaspora religions and the black female
subject, particularly the African-American lesbian subject, and of how black same-sex desire has an impact on cultural
productions.
Olajuba,
a professor at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, will be a visiting
lecturer and research associate in world religions. In her project, “Veritable Vehicle of Traditions: Women in Yoruba Christianity and Indigenous Religion,” she will be contrasting the
place of women in two religions, and examining the role of religion as a cultural tool in the creation of ideas about
gender.
Pintchman, a
member of the theology faculty at Loyola University, will also be a visiting
lecturer and research associate in world religions. She will be working on
“Guests at God’s Wedding: Hindu Women Celebrating the Marriage of Krishna and
Tulsi,” a study of how Hindu women in the city of Benares conceive of, and observe, a key sacred
event.
West,
a professor of ethics and African American religion at Drew University, will
be visiting lecturer and research associate in ethics. Her project,
“Locating Our Worth: Moral Discourse, Spiritual Consequences, and Black
Women’s Lives,” will look at how moral and spiritual questions, especially
those related to race and gender, are constructed in Christian social ethics.
The
Women’s Studies in Religion Program has announced that West is its inaugural
Colorado Scholar. This position has been endowed with a gift of $1 million by
a group of women in Colorado who believe sustained research on women and religion is
crucial to changing social situations that inhibit women’s chances to achieve and lead
throughout the world.
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