Transforming Scriptures: Katherine Clay Bassard

Katherine Clay Bassard appreciates the interpretive opportunities that come from reading the Bible when the pieces don't quite fit together into a smooth narrative.  "After quite a few years of really studying the Bible and of living with the Bible, as a book, I have come to understand that there are both egalitarian strains in the Bible, and there are more hierarchical power dynamics, and they are laid, in some senses, side by side" in the text, she says.  

Bassard explores these frictions of reading in the history of African American interpretations of the Bible.  Both in the Christianity of antebellum slaves, and especially in the growing interpretive voice of African American women writers, these power dynamics of hierarchy and liberation have proved a fertile soil for deep and fruitful theological reflection.

Dr. Bassard will speak in Memphis on Thursday, October 18th at the University Center Theater of the University of Memphis.  Her talk will begin at 6:30pm, and there is a reception preceding the event at 6pm.  The talk is put together by the Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities. 
Katherine Clay Bassard is professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.  She is the author of Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible, and Spiritual Interrogations: Culture, Gender, and Community in Early African American Women's Writing.  She has also written a guest column for the Faith in Memphis section in this week's Commercial Appeal.

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