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Johannes Munck Lecture

Prof. Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, University of Oslo The Intersectional Turn: Implications for New Testament Studies and Theology

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 12 October 2022,  at 13:15 - 15:00

Location

1453-415 (Bed og Arbejd)

Various disciplines borrow, employ, or steal theories and models from each other. There are many traveling concepts in the academy; ways of thinking are imported, negotiated and adjusted into new areas. We talk about turns, shifts, or waves to describe how a research field is changing in radical ways. In this lecture we look at the potential of the soon 40 years old theory of intersectionality, and how it did its journey from law studies in USA, via critical race and gender theory, to a relatively recently arrival (safely?) in Biblical studies. Intersectionality can be employed as an analytical tool to better understand the complexity of ancient texts. It offers New Testament studies a new perspective, with which we in this lecture will read selected texts from the gospels and the Pauline epistles. Intersectional theories generate a nuanced language to talk about the function and meaning of Biblical texts and their reception history, as well as the positionality and situatedness of readers and interpreters. An intersectional turn within Biblical studies may accordingly have potential implications for methodology, conceptualization and for the overall research agenda of the discipline.