2022-2023 Womanist Leadership Institute
 

INFORMATION FOR COURSES OFFERED IN THE 2022-2023 ACADEMIC YEAR

 

This Womanist Work: Models of Womanist Leadership - Rev. Melanie Jones

Six-Week Core Course  | Tuesdays, July 19-August 23, 2022  |  6-8 p.m. EDT

Models of Womanist Leadership is a signature course of The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership that presents a framework for womanist leadership within families, communities, organizations, and congregations. Utilizing womanist theo-ethical tenets, this course is a study in Black women’s leadership practices that integrate virtues of truth telling, wisdom-sharing, justice-seeking, and communal-centering. It clarifies the relationship among key concepts of leadership, authority, power, influence, citizenship, ethics, responsibility, accountability, and progress with particular attention to the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Through womanist strategies and tools, students will discover pathways for practicing ethical leadership from any position in an organization, community, or society while exploring ways to cultivate social transformation through the activity of just leadership in the public square.  

 

Womanist Ways of Worship - Rev. Dr. Lisa Allen-McLaurin

Six-Week Elective Course  |  Mondays, September 19-October 24, 2022  |  6-8 p.m. EDT

Womanist Ways of Worship is a six-week course that examines the history of Christian worship, particularly in America, deconstructs its theological and liturgical foundations, and presents a liberative liturgical paradigm based on Womanist theology and hermeneutics. This course is designed to help students investigate worship liturgies and orders, analyze problematic theologies, language, and images present, and reconstruct worship liturgies and orders that can help facilitate a more inclusive worship experience.

 

Womanist Biblical Interpretation- Rev. Dr. Kimberly Russaw

Four-Week Core Course  |  Mondays, January 9-February 6, 2023 (class will not meet on January 16)  |  6-9 p.m. EST

Since the latter portion of the 20th century, African American Biblical Hermeneutics and Womanist Biblical Interpretation have emerged as distinct apparatuses of exegetical inquiry in the area of Biblical Studies. While some may argue the common history of Africans in America does not warrant a bifurcation of biblical interrogation, the nuanced evolution of African Americans in the religious academy and the unique experiences of African American women therein help explain the existence of two distinct avenues of biblical scholarship. Not unlike the theological analogues of Liberation Theology and Mujerista Theology, the concerns of African American Biblical Hermeneutics and Womanist Biblical Interpretation are not wholly identical. To oversimplify, African American Biblical Hermeneutics is primarily concerned with race while Womanist Biblical Interpretation takes up (at least) the interlocking concerns of race, class, and gender in its examination of the world behind, within, and in front of the biblical text.

Womanist Biblical Interpretation is a four-week-online intensive survey course designed to introduce participants to the major themes, concerns, and scholars of the exegetical method. Working synchronously and asynchronously, students will critically engage the works of Womanist biblical scholars to understand the ways this scholarly enterprise has evolved and consider possible trajectories for its future. Importantly, this course relies heavily upon students’ close readings of both biblical passages and scholarly writings to scrutinize how factors such as methodological approaches, socio-historical contexts, and individual or community urgencies collaborate to produce Womanist Biblical Interpretation scholarship within the religious academy.

 

Black Women's Mental Health as Resistance - Dr. Jessica Young Brown

Six-Week Elective Course  |  Thursdays, April 20-May 25, 2023  |  7-9 p.m. EDT

Black Women's Mental Health as Resistance will explore the necessity and revolutionary nature of black women's mental health as resistance in a society which encourages the "strong black woman" as opposed to the "well black woman."  Students will explore strategies for mental wellness set forth by womanist scholars and ways to explore mental wellness as a strategy for resistance.