Scriptures, Race, Nation

Saturday, March 13, 2021, 4:00 PM

Scriptures, Race, Nation: Thinking Through our Mystifications

Virtual Lecture - FREE

This year's Helen White Memorial Lecture will feature Professor Vincent L. Wimbush, author of African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures. African Americans have been studying the Bible for over 500 years. This vital tradition of interpretation holds transformative power for all. Hear about this way of studying the Bible and consider how its practice would change the ways we read and interpret scripture.

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VINCENT L. WIMBUSH is an internationally recognized scholar of religion. With almost forty years of professional experience, he is author/editor of more than twelve books, including White Men’s Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery; Scripturalectics: The Management of Meaning; MisReading America: Scriptures and Difference; Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon; and African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Text and Social Textures; and scores of articles and essays. He is founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures (signifyingscriptures.org), an independent trans-disciplinary alternative scholarly organization focused on discourse and power, and is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Wimbush has held full-time professorial positions at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City and the Claremont Graduate School and Claremont School of Theology in California. He has also taught at a number of other institutions, including Harvard Divinity School, Drew University, Pacific School of Religion, University of Illinois, and Williams College. He was appointed Visiting Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa (2015-16), and has over several decades lectured widely throughout North America, in Europe and in Africa. His most recent institutional appointment is as Senior Research Fellow, Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

Research and Program Grants over Wimbush’s career have been awarded by: the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment for the Humanities; Lilly Foundation; Luce Foundation; and the Ford Foundation, to list a few.

Current general teaching/research interests focus on the trans-disciplinary study of “scriptures” as sharp wedge for research and theorizing in the politics of discourse, social formation, consciousness, and orientation. His particular area of expertise turns around the uses of scriptures in the modern circum-Black Atlantic.

Thank you to this year's sponsors, United Lutheran Seminary's Urban Theological Institute, Philadelphia Theological Institute, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania's Anti-Racism Commission.