Intersectional Criticism: Gender, Class, Race, Sexuality, and Disability

Programme

Intersectionality refers to interconnected social categorisations such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation and disability. So, an intersectional approach to the field of biblical studies looks to challenge the traditional nature of biblical studies as a field dominated by white, western, heterosexual, Christian men. This historic hegemony of the field has meant that scholars who inhabit the aforementioned social location are upheld as normative and therefore are not required to interrogate or state their positionality as it refers to their work. This workshop seeks to ask the question, what about the rest of us? Conversations about positionality are beginning to emerge in biblical studies and this workshop seeks to further this conversation. Our goal is to offer an opportunity for scholars who have been pushed to the margins of the field due to their social location, a space to present their research. It is our hope that the papers presented in this workshop will showcase how acknowledging the way our social locations impact our research garners varied and rich reflections, creating a field that is more reflective of the scholars of which it comprises.

Keywords:

Chairs

Suzanna Millar

University of Edinburgh

Daisy Andoh

University of Edinburgh

Rae Fujimori

University of Edinburgh

Sofia 2024 Call for Papers

A workshop, ‘Intersectional Criticism: Gender, Class, Race, Sexuality, and Disability’ will be hosting a session at the Conference Sofia 2024. This workshop builds on the successful work of “Minority and Postcolonial Criticism: Exegetical Explorations & Decolonial Approaches to Biblical Interpretation” workshop, which was held last year. Throughout the process of establishing biblical studies as a field, a field has been dominated by white, western, heterosexual, Christian men. This historic hegemony has meant that scholars who inhabit the aforementioned social location are upheld as normative and therefore are not required to interrogate or state their positionality. In light of this context, this symposium earnestly poses the critical query, what about the rest of us?

We encourage scholars to work on a wide range of hermeneutical approaches and angles but centring on the question of what it means to intersect: for example,

1. Biblical interpretations interested in ‘queering’ or challenging traditional readings of the text.
2. Exegesis focusing on intersectional hermeneutical lenses.
3. Papers using interdisciplinary methodologies; for example cognitive linguistics or sociological approaches such as social trauma theory.