Special Section: A Conversation on Mothering and Self-Sacrifice in Ancient Texts and Contemporary Movements

At the 2019 American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings, Feminist Studies in Religion sponsored a panel discussion on the recently published Mary, Mother of Martyrs: How Motherhood Became Self-Sacrifice in Early Christianity (now available from Wipf & Stock). Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza organized a scholarly conversation about the method and key concepts in Kathleen Gallagher Elkins’s book, which was published by FSR. This special section features the contributions of the panelists and Gallagher Elkins’s response, the combination of which highlights feminist and womanist scholarly conversations on self-sacrifice and motherhood in ancient texts as well as current events and movements of activist mothers.