The Unnamed Mystics: A conversation with Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw
March 15, 2022
In this episode, Cassidy interviews her former professor of Hebrew Bible and African American Biblical Hermeneutics and Womanist Biblical Interpretation, Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw, who is now professor of Hebrew Bible at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. In this episode they discuss contemplation and mysticism in the Hebrew Bible, the ways in which contemplation can clear us, and new ways to think about mysticism and contemplation: “One way to think about it is a person is in the subject position when it comes to contemplation but in the object position when it comes to mysticism.”
Dr. Russaw talks about her work as a Womanist scholar, expressing how part of her work as a professor and scholar is to “engage others in life we may have read over, may have missed or misread all along.” As Dr. Russaw mentioned in her essay “Wisdom in the Garden,”: "Womanist ways of reading the biblical text are subversive in that, by and large, they disrupt tightly held images of God and God's relationship to humanity.”
In this episode, Cassidy interviews her former professor of Hebrew Bible and African American Biblical Hermeneutics and Womanist Biblical Interpretation, Dr. Kimberly Russaw, who is now professor of Hebrew Bible at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. In this episode they discuss contemplation and mysticism in the Hebrew Bible, the ways in which contemplation can clear us, and new ways to think about mysticism and contemplation: “One way to think about it is a person is in the subject position when it comes to contemplation but in the object position when it comes to mysticism.”
Dr. Russaw talks about her work as a Womanist scholar, expressing how part of her work as a professor and scholar is to “engage others in life we may have read over, may have missed or misread all along.” As Dr. Russaw mentioned in her essay “Wisdom in the Garden,”: "Womanist ways of reading the biblical text are subversive in that, by and large, they disrupt tightly held images of God and God's relationship to humanity.”
Bio:
Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, where she serves as the chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics program unit. She is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Her many publications include Revisiting Rahab: Another Look at the Woman of Jericho, and “Undaunted: Reading Miriam for the Sisters They Tried to Erase” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition. Russaw has lectured or presented at events for PBS, Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East, the Association of Theological Schools, and the Society of Biblical Literature, in addition to events at many universities and seminaries. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel from Vanderbilt University, and she is an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.