Womanism

Our presentation on Womanism featured in part the work of Dr. Wilda C. Gafney, author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction To The Women Of The Torah and The Throne. In her book she supplied a list of questions that emerge from Womanist praxis that we are preparing to apply to our reading of Judges 19. These questions will help us to read and analyze the Bible through a Womanist lens. They are:

1. Who is speaking and/or active?

2. Where are the women and girls, what they doing, and what are their names?

3. When women or other marginalized characters speak and act, whose interests are they seving?

4. Who (and where) are the characters without which the story could not have unfolded as articulated?

5. What are the power dynamics in the narrative?

6. What are the ethical implications of the text when read from the perspective of the dominant character(s)?

7. What are the ethical implications of the previous (especially traditional) readings of the text for Black women?

8. How have Black women historically related to the text?

9. In what ways do the contemporary circumstances of Black women readers shape new and renewed interpretations?

10. How do the values articulated in the text and its interpretation affect the well-being of the communities that Black women inhabit?

11. How does (can) this text function as Scripture for Black women?

12. Who is (what is the construction of) God in the text? Is s/he/it invested in the flourishing of Black women, our families, and our worlds?