http://www.aarweb.org/About_AAR/Committees/Status_of_Women_in_the_Profession/mentoringlunch2009.asp
AAR Women's Mentoring Lunch
2009 AAR Annual Meeting, Montréal
Sunday, 11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Session A8-136
Palais des Congrès – 519 A & B
Registration now open!
Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College and Melissa M. Wilcox, Whitman 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.
2009 AAR Women’s Mentoring Lunch: Mentors and Self-descriptions
Monica A. Coleman has worked in historically black institutions, women’s colleges, and free-standing theological schools. She has experienced the academy as an adjunct faculty, a full-time faculty member, and with a faculty position with significant administrative duties. Coleman can speak from experiences in the academy shaped by racial (African American), age-related (young in a context of older faculty), female-gendered and queer-identities.
Chung Hyun Chung is Associate Professor at Union Theological Seminary. Her teaching and research interests include feminist and eco-feminist theologies and spiritualities from Asia, Africa and Latin America; Christian-Buddhist dialogue; Zen meditation; approaches to disease and healing in varied religious backgrounds; mysticism and revolutionary social change; Goddesses and women’s liberation in Asia; interfaith peacemaking; as well as the history and critical issues of various ecumenical theologies (e.g., Minjung theology, EATWOT theology, Gospel and Culture, interreligious dialogue). Professor Chung's published works include Struggling to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology (1991); In the End, Beauty Will Save Us All: A Feminist Spiritual Pilgrimage, Vols. I and II, published in Korean, (2002); Letter from The Future: The Goddess-Spell According to Hyun Kyung, published in Korean, (2003); and Hyun Kyung and Alice’s Fabulous Love Affair with God (2004), co-authored with renowned American novelist, Alice Walker; as well as numerous articles. She is currently working on a new book, Salimist Manifesta: Korean Women’s Theology of Life.
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.
Davina C. Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Eckerd College in St Petersburg, Florida, where she also coordinates the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She received a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her research and teaching interests include Pauline literature, Roman imperial visual representation, the study of gender and sexuality, methodology in biblical interpretation, and the practices of teaching and learning in religious studies. Davina is currently a member of the AAR's Job Placement Task Force, which has as its charge to examine all aspects of the job placement process for PhDs in religion and theology, and has served as a Student Director as well as on the Graduate Student Committee.
Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to liberation issues. She is the editor of A Guide for Women in Religion: Making Your Way from A to Z (Palgrave, 2004) and co-editor of Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions (Rutgers University Press, 2001). Her current project is on heterosexism.
Dr. 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 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.
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.
Namsoon Kang is Associate 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).
Rebecca Alpert is Associate Professor of Religion and Women's Studies at Temple University. She was trained as a rabbi and worked for many years in academic administration at a seminary and at a large research institution. Her research interests are in religion and sport, contemporary American Judaism, and religion and sexuality.
Jane Naomi Iwamura. My research focuses on Asian American religions, race and popular culture in the United States (with an emphasis on visual culture). I have also written on the intersection of religion and Asian American literary production. My publications include the co-edited volume, Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America (Routledge, 2003), and I am currently finishing up my monograph, The Oriental Monk Comes West: Asian Religions in the Age of Virtual Orientalism (Oxford, forthcoming). Issues I have faced during my career include: gender and race in the academy and the study of religion; the politics of teaching race, gender, and sexuality in the religious studies classroom; teaching as a scholar/woman of color and students' expectations; the academic job market, negotiating tenure at an R1 university; and balancing work and family life. I currently teach the seminar, "Theories and Practices of Professional Development," required for all Ph.D. students in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at USC, in which we discuss these issues, as well as tackle the more nuts-and-bolts challenges of dissertation writing.
Devorah Schoenfeld completed her dissertation at the Graduate Theological Union in 2007 and is now in her second year of a tenure-track position and endowed chair in Jewish Studies at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is also the regional president of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Academy of Religion. She would be happy to discuss: strategies for finishing the dissertation, the job interview process, making the transition to a liberal arts college, specific issues facing Jewish Studies faculty at small liberal arts colleges, how to best use your regional meeting and how to get involved in AAR leadership at the regional level.
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).
Julie Byrne is an associate professor of religion at Hofstra University (Long Island, NY) and holds the Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies. Specializing in 20th c. American religious history, Byrne has also taught at Texas Christian University and Duke University; was a fellow in the Pew Young Scholars in American Religion Program (2003-4); and consults for WGBH-Boston's documentary television series on American religion (2008-present). Her book O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs (Columbia University Press, 2003) uses oral history and archival material to describe the unusual culture of women's college basketball in mid-20th-c. Catholic Philadelphia. At three universities, she has served on numerous committees for dissertation defenses, faculty hiring, peer teaching evaluation, curriculum restructuring, and tenure review. This academic year Byrne is conducting some pedagogical "experiments" and continues writing her next book, on independent Catholicism.
Susan Abraham's teaching and research explores postcolonial and feminist theological practices invigorating contemporary communities of faith. She is the author of Identity, Ethics, and Nonviolence in Postcolonial Theory: A Rahnerian Theological Assessment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and co-editor of Shoulder to Shoulder: Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology (Fortress, 2009). Her publications and presentations weave practical theological insights from the experience of working as a youth minister for the Diocese of Mumbai, India with theoretical perspectives from postcolonial theory, cultural studies and feminist theory. Ongoing research projects include issues in feminist theological education and formation for ministry, theology and political theory, religion and media, global Christianities and Christianity between colonialism and postcolonialism.
Karen Pechilis is a full professor who teaches Asian Religions and Comparative Religion at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. She is in the Religious Studies department in the liberal arts college at the university. For four years (04-08) she served as the Distinguished Professor and Director of the Humanities Program at Drew. She recently completed two terms on the AAR's Status of Women in the Profession Committee, and she is currently the Book Review Editor for the International Journal of Hindu Studies. Her publications include The Embodiment of Bhakti (OUP 1999), The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States (Editor and Contributor, OUP 2004), and a Special Section on "Feminist Theory and the Study of South Asian Religions" in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Convener and Contributor; spring 2008).
Anne Joh is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her areas of teaching and research are at the intersections of constructive theology and psycho-social theory of oppression, postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis, critical studies of race, gender and sexuality. Her book, Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology was reviewed by a panel of theologians at the American Academy of Religion. She has written numerous essays included in volumes that explore the issues described above. She was a recipient of the Women of Color Doctoral Scholars Program during her doctoral studies and now serves on the board of mentors. She is the Co-Chair of Bible, Theology and Postmodernity Group , Steering Committee Member of the Asian North American Religion, Culture and Society Group and serves as member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession in the American Academy of Religion. She is also a member of the Workgroup in Constructive Theology and also serves as consulting editorial board member for the Emerging Theological Initiative program of Westminster John Knox Press.
