http://www.aarweb.org/About_AAR/Committees/Status_of_Women_in_the_Profession/mentoringlunch.asp
AAR Women's Mentoring Lunch
2011 AAR Annual Meeting, San Francisco
Sunday, November 20
11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Registration now open!
Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College, Presiding
Sponsored by the Status of Women in the Profession Committee, Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee, Status of LGBTIQ Persons in the Profession Task Force, and the Women's Caucus
The Status of Women in the Profession Committee, Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee, Status of LGBTIQ Persons in the Profession Task Force, and the Women's Caucus invite women who are graduate students and new scholars to a luncheon with over thirty womanist, feminist, and LGBTIQ midcareer and senior scholars. Women will have the opportunity to mentor and be mentored in a context where every question is valued. The lunch costs $10 per person; sorry, no refunds. Registration is limited to 100. Click here to register.
2011 AAR Women’s Mentoring Lunch: Mentors and Self-descriptions
Rebecca T. Alpert is Associate Professor of Religion and Women's Studies at Temple University. She attended Barnard College before receiving her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. She is the co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach, author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition and Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism as well as several edited volumes and numerous articles. Her specialization is religion in America, and with a focus on sexuality and race. She has recently taught courses on religion in American public life; Jews, America and sports; and sexuality in world religions. Her most recent work, Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, will be available from Oxford Press in June 2011.
Ellen T. Armour currently holds the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School where she also directs the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty, she taught at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN for 16 years. She is the author of Deconstruction, Feminist Theology, and the Problem Of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) and co-editor of Bodily Citations: Judith Butler and Religion (Columbia University Press, 2006). Her research interests are informed by her own identity as a white lesbian feminist.
Rita Nakashima Brock, an award-winning author, nonprofit director, and professional editor, was the first Asian American woman to earn a doctorate in theology (1988), and she was a professor of religion and women’s studies for twenty years. From 1997 to 2001, she directed the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship Program, Harvard University, dedicated to advancing the careers of professional women. For the past two decades, she has been a selector and mentor for the United Methodist Women of Color Scholars Program.
Melanie L. Harris is Assistant Professor of Religion and Ethics at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Her teaching and research interests include Christian Social Ethics, Womanist Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Media and Religion and Black Religious Thought. Dr. Harris is the author of several academic articles including “Womanist Humanism: A New Hermeneutic,” in Deeper Shades of Purple: Charting Twenty Years of Womanist Approaches in Religion and Society, and “Saving the Womanist Self: Womanist Soteriology and the Gospel of Mary” in the Union Seminary Quarterly Review. She is currently working on the publication of EcoWomanism: Womanist Earth Ethics, a text that presents a womanist approach to environmental ethics. Dr. Harris is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she received her Master of Philosophy and Doctoral degrees. She completed her Masters of Divinity at Iliff School of Theology and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Spelman College.
Susan Henking is Professor of Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (liberal arts colleges). She served as chair of her department for a decade and as a senior administrator for several years. She was a co-founder of the lesbian feminist issues in religion section of the AAR, served on the AAR board for 9 years, and was the founding editor of the AAR Teaching Religious Studies series. She co-edited Que(e)rying Religious Studies with Gary David Comstock and Mourning Religion with William Parsons and Diane Jonte Pace. Her areas of research include religion and the history of the social sciences, gender and sexuality in the American context.
Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist Catholic theologian and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland. Dr. Hunt lectures and writes on theology and ethics. She is the editor of A Guide for Women in Religion: Making Your Way from A to Z (Palgrave, 2004) and co-editor with Diann L. Neu of New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views (SkyLight Paths, 2010).
Namsoon Kang is Professor of World Christianity and Religions at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. Before she joined Brite Divinity School in 2006, she taught at Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK, and Methodist Theological Seminary, Korea. Having studied in Korea, Germany, and the US, and taught theology in Korea, UK, and the US, she has multiple locationalities/ positionalities. Her expertise is in constructive theology, post-discourses, feminism, and ecumenism. She is currently the president of WOCATI (World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions).
Zayn Kassam is Professor of Religious Studies at Pomona College, Claremont, California and is also on the faculty at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. A graduate of McGill University (Ph.D 1995), she teaches courses in Islamic philosophy, mysticism, gender and literature as well as a course on religion and the environment. She has lectured widely on gender issues in the United States, Canada, and Britain. She has been honored with two Wig Awards for Distinguished Teaching at Pomona College, as well as an American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award. She is the author of a book on Islam that is part of a series on the world's major religions, and editor of a book of essays dealing with gender in Muslim societies and activism. She is currently working on two books, one on gender issues in the Islamic world and another on medieval Qur’anic hermeneutics. Zayn has chaired the department of Religious Studies at Pomona College, and coordinated the programs in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian Studies. She serves on several national editorial boards, including the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and has co-chaired the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion, as well as served on the Racial and Ethnic Minorities committee at the AAR.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim is an Associate Professor of Doctrinal Theology at Moravian Theological Seminary. Kim is the author of The Holy Spirit, Chi, and the Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Grace of Sophia (Pilgrim Press). Presently, she is working on a volume on 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, in Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, (WJK Press). Kim has written numerous book chapters such as “Asian American Feminist Theology,” in Liberation Theologies in the United States, (NYU Press), and “What Forms Us,” in Feminist Theology With A Canadian Accent (Novalis). Kim is active in the academy, serves on AAR’s Racial and Ethnic Minorities Committee and is part of the AAR's Korean Systematic Theology Group. She also serves on AAR’s steering committees, Comparative Theology Group and Women of Color Scholarship, Teaching and Activism Consultation. Kim sits on the editorial board of the Journal for Religion and Popular Culture.
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Ph.D. is Professor of Theology and Women’s studies at Shaw University Divinity School (Raleigh, NC). She holds a doctorate from Baylor University. The 2009 Shaw University Excellence in Research Awardee is author and editor of over twenty books and numerous articles and is an Ordained Elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Her research and teaching is interdisciplinary, liberationist, theoretical, and practical. She has been a professor in undergraduate, graduate, and seminary settings. Her latest volume co-authored with Marlon Hall, Wake Up!: Hip Hop, Christianity, and the Black Church, is due out June, 2011, Abingdon Press. She works in interfaith and ecumenical contexts. Known for her 6 P’s: professor, preacher, priest, prophet, poet, and performer, Dr. Kirk-Duggan is an avid athlete and musician, who completed her first marathon (November, 2010). She loves to tinker with her flowers, embraces laughter as her best medicine, with the quest for a foundational healthy, holistic, spiritual life. She resides in Raleigh with her beloved husband, Mike.
Rebecca Todd Peters is a Christian social ethicist who works primarily on globalization, economics and the environment. She is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Elon University, a mid-sized church-affiliated institution in North Carolina. She would be happy to discuss issues of transitioning from graduate school to a tenure-track position; balancing work, family, and personal life; tenure process; managing a research agenda with a heavy teaching load; and pedagogy and teaching related issues (including service-learning and engaged learning).
Nargis Virani is currently Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Arabic section coordinator at the New School. Formerly, she taught at the University of British Columbia in Canada and Washington University in St. Louis where she also headed the Arabic language program and served a term as the Director of the Center for Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures. A graduate of Harvard University (Ph.D. 1999), she has widely traveled and studied at many prestigious institutions in the Muslim world such as the University of Jordan in Amman, the Bourguiba Institute in Tunis, and al-Azhar mosque in Cairo. Her research explores intersections between Scripture (The Qur’an) and Literature in a Muslim milieu. She is currently working on two book projects. The first book entitled The Multilingual Rumi will be a book of translations of the entire multilingual corpus of Rumi’s poetry into English discussing the relationship between multilinguality and mystical discourse. The second book, tentatively entitled The Qur’an in Muslim Literary and Mystical Memory, discusses the use of the Qur’an in Muslim secular, religious, and mystico-literary writings. Dr. Virani is the author of articles published in the Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, Voices of Islam, and Comparative Studies of the South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She currently serves on the Steering Committee of the American Academy of Religion’s Islam section. She also serves as a member on the AAR’s Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession (CREM).
Traci C. West is professor of Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School. Her most recent publications include Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter and editing Our Family Values: Religion and Same-Sex Marriage. In her research, teaching, and activism she focuses on intimate violence and how constructions of race inform issues of gender and sexual justice.
