Dialogical Beginnings: A Conversation on the Future of Feminist Biblical Studies

It was not an accident that the two of us initiated the panel discussion at the 2008 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) from which this roundtable discussion was created. As women scholars born in countries other than the United States, we come from "inbetween" spaces, the margins of U.S. society, peeking in, also participating in various ways, but always recognizable as other, especially when we speak and our accents come through (which is also a blessing). We come from very different countries of origin: Dora from Zimbabwe and Susanne from Germany, one country torn by sociopolitical corruption and distress, the other country among the most prosperous in the world. Both of us have careers in the United States. Dora has taught at a historically African American seminary and Susanne has taught at private, mostly white liberal arts colleges and recently moved into graduate teaching in a seminary-university context. One is a naturalized alien, the other a resident alien—hence there is always something "alien" about us not only when we talk and work in this country but also when we return to our countries of origin.

In the United States, Dora and Susanne occupy different racial-ethnic spaces but because of our commonality as "born aliens," we enjoy unique positions that enable us to speak easily with each other about the lack of interaction among feminist Bible scholars across boundaries of geography, race, religion, and language. Our geographical and sociolegal positioning makes us feel comfortable to speak with each other, to share our perspectives, to want to collaborate, and to address the state of feminist biblical studies together. We benefit from bringing our colleagues together across differences and encouraging conversation among us. It makes us feel less alien when those from the center and the margins join us in talking about challenges and opportunities in contemporary feminist biblical studies. Yet we also experience differently the pressures of assimilation into the U.S.-American mainstream. As an African, Dora has been accused of not being sensitive enough to the historical tensions between African Americans and white Americans. Susanne has faced criticism of being "un-American" when she articulated dissatisfaction with U.S.-American foreign policy in an all white classroom setting in which she was the only white European-German.

We invited panelists to respond to the following concerns about the status and future of feminist biblical studies. We could have added more categories, but these were the most prominent for both of us:

1. 1. the interconnectedness of gender and other social categories

2. 2. methodology in feminist biblical work

3. 3. male student resistance and curricular "constraints"

4. 4. the co-optation of feminist biblical interpreters

5. 5. difference and cooperation among feminist biblical scholars

6. 6. the material conditions of our work environments

7. 7. developing an "independent" infrastructure in feminist biblical studies

We want to emphasize that our comments were intended to stimulate productive discussions among us and to offer ideas about some of the issues currently relevant to feminist biblical studies as seen by Dora and Susanne during our conversations, which took place mostly by phone and email. We assumed that both at the panel discussion and hopefully also into the future, the commenters (and now, our readers) would confirm but also modify and expand the observations we presented. By sharing our observations, we did not and do not intend to stifle or limit the conversation. On the contrary, we intend our comments as a conversational spark because in our view, we often do not have an opportunity for sharing ideas and discussion. Our goal, then, was and still is to nurture the conversation. We hope our observations resonate with other feminist biblical scholars and will be valuable to you in your own reflection process.

The Interconnectedness of Gender and Other Social Categories

We have found out that, perhaps unsurprisingly, we assume gender stereotypes in different ways. Dora recognizes that in many African countries, women experience patriarchal oppression and sexism as a fact. In Africa, feminists read the Bible to empower African women whereas Western feminists...