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Clarity and creativity as womanist ethics for teaching and evaluating theological writing
Author(s) -
Jordan Zandra L.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
teaching theology and religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.165
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1467-9647
pISSN - 1368-4868
DOI - 10.1111/teth.12502
Subject(s) - clarity , creativity , sociology , white (mutation) , class (philosophy) , black church , negotiation , theology , sexual ethics , pedagogy , gender studies , african american , psychology , epistemology , philosophy , anthropology , social psychology , social science , biochemistry , chemistry , human sexuality , gene
This article uses womanist ethics and theories of writing instruction to illuminate the experiences of black women seminarians with theological writing at a predominantly white institution. The three cases presented here highlight two ethics for teaching and evaluating theological writing: clarity and creativity. Already triply marginalized by race, sex, and class, black women are often greeted with unwritten norms around academic theological writing that threaten their self‐concept and their development as producers of theological knowledge. This work centers reflections of student‐learning on the voices of black women who found their own ways of negotiating these demands. Their responses to the problems of writing for and in white, male‐dominated theological discourses provide moral strategies that all writers can employ and that all theology professors can make a regular part of their ethical pedagogical practice.