CO-SPONSORED SESSION: Black Theology Unit and Theology of Martin Luther King Jr. Unit

Women and the Movement  

(90 minutes) We invite papers or organized paper sessions that take up the question of women and gender in the civil rights movement. Without question, women were essential in the life of Martin King Jr. and the wider civil rights movement. This session is interested in various methodological approaches toward an investigation of gender and the civil rights movement. What might an engagement between Black and womanist theologies, as well as Black studies, yield toward new ways of reading King and the wider campaign.  What new insights, from women authors, can we gain about gender, class, and sexual identities that provide fresh ways of reading the civil rights movement, especially MLK.  We are especially interested in papers that:

• Explore the women around King.

• Investigate the influence of women thinkers, activists, and preachers on King.

• Engage King from the standpoint of critical theory using women theorists.

• Employ a womanist theological lens to interrogate King’s theology.