Paul and Politics

Call For Papers: The Paul and Politics Section proposes four sessions at the 2021 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We have four sessions with three sessions open for paper proposals. TThe FIRST SESSION explores the unbearable whiteness of Pauline scholarship. Specifically, the panel will examine how Paul, his writings, and/or histories of interpretation interact with and construct white supremacy (see recent essays on "Whiteness and Biblical Studies" on the Political Theology Network). Papers that attend to white supremacy through multiple lenses including gender analysis, economic inequalities, decolonization strategies, sexuality studies, affect theory, and political systems analysis are especially encouraged. The SECOND SESSION, co-sponsored with African American Biblical Interpretation, will present a session on “Pauline Literature and African American Reception.” We seek papers that address varying Pauline texts and the reception of these texts in diverse African American communities with special interest in both centering and decentering Paul as a figure in African American communities. The steering committee especially encourages conversation with Lisa Bowens’s book, African American Interpretations of Paul (Eerdmans, 2020). The THIRD SESSION, a holdover from 2020, in collaboration with several SBL and AAR program units, welcomes papers on any aspect of Hortense Spillers’ work and its relationships to Paul and politics. Proposals, for instance, can focus on how Spillers’ work on slavery and its many lingering racialized, sexualized, and gendered legacies intersect with conversations around Paul and politics found in Pauline communities. The FOURTH SESSION will be an open call inviting proposals for papers on any element of research related to the relationship(s) between "Paul" and "politics" (in the broadest sense of both of these terms)

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