Playing with Texts: Pedagogies of Scripture

Nothing Never Happens

What does critical pedagogy offer when it comes to texts entangled with histories of oppression and disenfranchisement? How might we approach these texts so as to ask new questions and bring out different stories?

In this episode, we discuss these questions with three scholars from the Institute for Signifying Scriptures. These scholars discuss how the normative ways of studying "sacred texts" -- from "religious" texts like the Bible to "secular" texts like the US Constitution -- as historical artifacts with defined origins tends to reproduce colonial logics and exclude the voices of those on the margins of class and social power. They also share methods for engaging sacred texts in ways that challenge those power dynamics and foster critical imagination.

Dr. Vincent Wimbush is Director of the ISS and past president of of the Society for Biblical Literature. He is a prolific writer, whose works include White Men's Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery (2012) and Black Flesh Matters: Essays on Ranagate Interpretation (2022). He was on the filmmaking team that produced the award-winning documentary Finding God in the City of Angels (2021).

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo is a Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (2016).

Dr. Richard Newton is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures (2020).

The next meeting of the Institute for Sacred Scriptures will be held in Atlanta, GA, April 11-13, 2024. The theme for the 2024 Meeting is Marronage: A Special Meeting in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the ISS and the 25th Anniversary of African Americans and the Bible.