The Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, with the co-sponsorship of the Africana Studies Program and the Women's and Gender Studies Program, is please to announce this Spring's first Theorizing at Rowan lecture. On Thursday, February 4, in Bozorth 129, Nyasha Junior, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible in Temple Unviersity's Department of Religion, will present a talk entitled "Beyoncé, Black Women, and the Bible."

Prof. Junior has provided us with the following abstract of her talk: "African-American women have a complex relationship to feminism, which has often focused on the concerns of affluent, White women. Some African-American women choose to identify themselves and their scholarship as womanist, drawing on Alice Walker's 1983 definition of the term. Based on her recently published book An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation (Westminster John Knox 2015), Dr. Nyasha Junior will discuss how scholars use womanist approaches within biblical studies. She will explain how womanist biblical interpretation is related to feminist biblical interpretation and also deeply rooted in the work of previous generations of African-American women interpreters of the Bible."

Theorizing at Rowan is a series of public, work in progress lectures covering a broad range of topics of relevance to scholars in philosophy, religion studies, and other related disciplines. The goal of the series is to promote scholarly exchange in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, the rest of the university, and among intersted scholars throught the region. Speakers will include members of the department, faculty from elsewhere at Rowan and from other institutions.

All Theorizing at Rowan events are free and open to the public. All interested faculty, students and members of the community are warmly encouraged to attend.