WebinAAR | On Writing, Reviewing, and Being Reviewed (original) (raw)

Join us for an insightful conversation with three religious studies scholars who have contributed to Reading Religion as authors, reviewers, and reviewees. In this session, Ashon Crawley, Biko Gray, and Oluwatomisin Oredein will share their insights on the intricate relationship between writing, reviewing, and being reviewed.

Ashon Crawley | Crawleyis a professor of religious studies and African American and African studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Lonely Letters (Duke University Press, 2020) an exploration of the interrelation of blackness, mysticism, quantum mechanics and love. He is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled Made Instrument, about the role of the Hammond Organ in the institutional and historic Black Church, in Black sacred practice and in Black social life more broadly. All his work is about otherwise possibility.

Biko Mandela Gray | Gray is an assistant professor of religion at Syracuse University and author of Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject (Duke University Press, 2022). Gray’s work operates at the nexus and interplay between continental philosophy of religion and theories and methods in African American religion. His research is primarily on the connection between race, subjectivity, religion, and embodiment, exploring how these four categories play on one another in the concrete space of human experience. He also is interested in the religious implications of social justice movements.

Oluwatomisin Oredein | Oredein is an assistant professor in Black Religious Traditions, Constructive Theology and Ethics at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. She is also director of the Black Church Studies Program. Her scholastic and creative work engages theopoetics from a Black diasporic perspective, constructive theology, liminal identity and faith, American African articulations of womanist theology and ethics, and postcolonial thought. She is the author of The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), the co-editor of Theopoetics in Color: Embodied Approaches in Theological Discourse with Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch (Eerdmans, 2024), and author of the work in process, The Care Book.

Kimberly Davis | Davis is senior editor of Reading Religion, a publication of the American Academy of Religion. Previously, Davis was a journalism instructor at the University of Georgia, the University of Maryland, and Trinity Washington University. She also served as a communications director and consultant for various political campaigns and nonprofit organizations. In her nearly 30-year career, Davis has worked for Ebony magazine, several newspapers, and as a freelance writer and academic editor. She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and earned a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of Georgia.