Walking Through the Valley: Womanist Explorations in the Spirit of Katie Geneva Cannon

Marking the fifth anniversary of noted social ethicist Katie Geneva Cannon’s untimely death, the panelists, who are also the co-editors of this volume, explore how Cannon’s conception of womanism can be used in moral thought through four themes that were important in Cannon’s work: sacred texts, structural poverty and communal solidarity, leadership, and embodied ethics.  Cannon argued that dominant (normative) ethics was designed, however unintentionally, to mark those of darker hues as morally deficient if not bankrupt because of its understanding of what constitutes virtue, value, identity, and theological standpoint.  Cannon’s writings and lectures and classes ushered in other persistent voices that disputed this methodological and moral valley.