Black Theology Unit

The Black Theology Unit invites individual papers and panel submissions on the topics identified below and proposals on additional topics of interest that advance the discipline of Black theology. In accordance with the 2023 theme: "La Labor de Nuestros Manos (The Work of Our Hands)," we invite submissions that explore black theological discourse through topics such as:

• Black theology and the borderlands; liminal Black identities; Black/Brown political relationality; Brown antiBlackness 
• The response of Black theology to social death
• Black theology, "Black aliveness," and the politics of Black joy
• Black theology and capitalist economy; the relationship between economic democracy and racial justice
• Black theology and Black nationalism 
• Black theology and grassroots re/sources
• Black theology, critical race theory, and censorship
• Black ecotheologies, Black geographies and climate catastrophe
• Black theology and embodied pneumatologies
• Black theology and the recovery of non-Christian theisms

We also invite papers on:

• new directions and methods in the field of Black Theology
• The distinctiveness of Black Liberation Theology - What does liberation mean? How has "liberation" evolved since the emergence of Black theology? 
• Black theology and the Black literary imagination 
• Black theology, Black bodies, and the problem of the non/human 
• Possible co-sponsorship with the Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop and Religion Unit discussing the intersections of overlap between Black Theology and Hip-Hop.

Co-sponsorship between Black Theology and Martin Luther King Jr. Units

Women and the Movement  

We invite papers or organized paper sessions that take up the question of women and gender in the civil rights movement. Without question, women were essential in the life of Martin King Jr. and the wider civil rights movement. This session is interested in various methodological approaches toward an investigation of gender and the civil rights movement. What might an engagement between Black and womanist theologies, as well as Black studies, yield toward new ways of reading King and the wider campaign.  What new insights, from women authors, can we gain about gender, class, and sexual identities that provide fresh ways of reading the civil rights movement, especially MLK.  We are especially interested in papers that:

• Explore the women around King.

• Investigate the influence of women thinkers, activists, and preachers on King.

• Engage King from the standpoint of critical theory using women theorists.

• Employ a womanist theological lens to interrogate King’s theology.

Sisters in the Wilderness – Honoring the life and scholarly legacy of womanist theologian Delores Williams and the 30th Anniversary of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist Godtalk (Orbis, 1993)

Our unit is arranging a co-sponsored panel with the Black Theology unit and Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions, honoring the scholarly legacy of the late Delores Williams, a trailblazing womanist theologian. We recognize the significance of Williams’ works and particularly highlight the 30th Anniversary of the publication of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist Godtalk. This is an invited panel with closed submissions.