Graduate Division of Religion

Women in the ancient world have been presented by biblical writers and understood by later interpreters as either “good” or “bad” depending on how well they followed patriarchal rule. Women who claimed their own autonomy and made decisions that benefited themselves or their loved ones, despite patriarchal hegemony, were viewed as “stepping out of their place.” However, this claiming of full personhood, of rejecting or resisting male superiority should be understood as female agency. This article examines, reimagines, and celebrates female agency in New Testament texts from a womanist perspective and encourages contemporary interpreters to do the same.

In this conversation, the Reverend Dr. Shanell Smith shares her strategies for incorporating politics into the classroom via an explicitly politicizing technique, “Keepin’ it Real.” She discusses the process of considering what to include and how to include it (and why we must!), and offers a window into how it might look in the classroom, using examples from a class on Mary that she teaches in an online seminary setting. Smith emphasizes the importance of modeling personalized scholarly inquiry for our students, including and especially the openness and vulnerability that make our scholarship matter both to us and to the world we share.