EFSR is the branch of FSR that facilitates the organization’s electronic and social media presence. In essence, EFSR is the electronic publishing unit including the website, blog, video channel, Facebook, and Twitter.
EFSR explores the many and diverse ways in which feminism and religion intersect through online media such as blogging (FSR Blog), video archiving and social media. The ways in which board members help facilitate this process include: contributing to the Feminist Studies in Religion Blog; providing feedback on web design and function in order to get valuable information on the intersections between feminism and religion out to both current and potential readership; and serve as peer reviewers of guest blog submissions throughout the year.
To successfully sustain the work of EFSR, we rely on the combined efforts of our editors, intern, and board:
-
Maytha Alhassen, Pop Culture Collaborative (Senior Fellow)
-
Toni Bond
-
Kimi N. Bryson, Rutgers University
-
Midori E. Hartman, Albright College
-
Meghan R. Henning, University of Dayton
-
Alison L. Joseph, Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture
-
Jennifer Maidrand, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
-
Samira K. Mehta, University of Colorado Boulder
-
Angela N. Parker, McAfee School of Theology
-
Michal Raucher, Rutgers University
-
Tamisha A Tyler, Bethany Theological Seminary
-
Kayla Renée Wheeler, Xavier University
-
Karri Alldredge, New York University
Maytha Alhassen, Pop Culture Collaborative (Senior Fellow)
EFSR Board Member
Toni Bond
EFSR Board Member
For almost 30 years, Dr. Toni Bond has worked tirelessly to make the voices of Black women heard around issues of reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice. In 1994, Dr. Bond was one of the twelve Black women who gave birth to the concept of “Reproductive Justice,” creating a paradigm shift in how women of color would add their collective voices to the fight for reproductive autonomy and freedom. Reproductive justice was created to shed light on the combined forms of oppression that contribute to women of color’s reproductive oppression and as a systematic way to develop practical strategies of resistance and liberation.
In 1994, Dr. Bond was the first black woman appointed to serve as the executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, one of the oldest abortion funds in the Midwest. In 1996, she co-founded and led the first Black women’s reproductive justice organization in the country, Black Women for Reproductive Justice. Dr. Bond is a recognized leader and expert on working at the intersections of religion and reproductive justice. A womanist theo-ethicist, her areas of specialization include gender and sexuality, reproductive health, rights, and justice, Black feminist theory and methodology, womanist theory and methodology, and womanist and Christian ethics. Her scholarly foci are reproductive justice and women of color, religion, faith, and reproductive justice, and womanist theo-ethics and reproductive justice.
Keynotes and lectures Dr. Bond has given include the American Public Health Association, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, the American Academy of Religion, the Intercollegiate Feminist Center for Teaching, Research and Engagement at Scripps College, the National Abortion Federation, the International Cross-Cultural Black Women’s Studies Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, the 10th International Women and Health Meeting in New Delhi, India, the National Convocation—Christian Church Disciples of Christ, and a NGO-sponsored session at the 2001 Third UN World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and other Forms of Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. In December, 2008, Dr. Bond was part of a group of reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates invited to make recommendations to President Barack Obama’s transition team about advancing reproductive health and rights. Her testimony garnered her additional invitations from the Obama administration to participate in several White House meetings to share her insights about reducing unintended pregnancies.
Dr. Bond is the recipient of numerous awards, including, the Jane Bagley Lehman Fellowship from the Tides Foundation, the Pauli Murray Award from the Chicago Now Education Fund, the Bella Abzug Woman of Achievement Award from the Chicago Chapter of the National Organization of Women, and the Women in History Award from the Woman’s Board of the Chicago Urban League. In 2017, she received the Sharon Watson Fluker Doctoral Fellowship from the Forum for Theological Exploration. In support of her dissertation research, in 2019, Dr. Bond was named the inaugural Fellow for the Fellowship for Reproductive Justice Research, a research fellowship sponsored by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a collaborative research group at the University of California, San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. She was named the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at Interfaith Voices for Reproductive Justice. Dr. Bond also received the Emerging Scholars Award from the Society for Family Planning in support of her dissertation research. She was one of the 2019 fellows in the CrossCurrents Summer Research Colloquium at Auburn Seminary.
Dr. Bond currently serves as board chair of the board of directors for Interfaith Voices for Reproductive Justice. She is also on the board of the Civil Liberties & Public Policy Program. She has served on the boards and advisory committees of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the Trust Black Women Partnership, the National Network of Abortion Funds, and the Guttmacher Institute.
Dr. Bond received her B.A. from DePaul University with a focus in Women & Gender Studies. She completed her M.A. in Theology/Ethics at Claremont School of Theology (CST), receiving their University Scholars Award, a fully funded scholarship. She completed her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Society at CST.
Kimi N. Bryson, Rutgers University
EFSR Submissions Editor
Kimi N. Bryson is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. She received her Bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Studies from Wheaton College (IL) and her Master’s from Yale Divinity School, with a concentration on Black Religion. Her undergraduate thesis analyzed how white evangelicals respond to sexual assault survivors. Her current research explores Black women’s complicated relationships with white evangelicalism, asking what it means for Black women to leave harmful institutions and what it takes to stay. In her free time, she is an avid gluten free baker, a creative writer, and a rom com connoisseur.
Midori E. Hartman, Albright College
EFSR Board Member
Midori E. Hartman is an Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Albright College. She holds a PhD in Historical Studies with an emphasis on Christianity in Late Antiquity from Drew University. Her primary research interests are Augustine of Hippo, ancient slavery, and rhetoric as it intersects with issues of gender, ethnicity, and animality.
Meghan R. Henning, University of Dayton
EFSR Board Member
Meghan R. Henning is an Associate Professor of Christian Origins at the University of Dayton. She specializes in New Testament and Early Christianity, and holds an undergraduate degree in Religion and Economics from Denison University, a Masters degree in Biblical Studies from Yale Divinity School, and a doctorate in New Testament from Emory University.
Meghan’s first book (Mohr Siebeck) on the pedagogical function of Hell in antiquity is entitled Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell. She has written a number of articles, essays, and invited papers on Hell, the New Testament, apocalyptic literature, apocryphal literature, ancient rhetoric, disability studies, and pedagogy. In addition to the New Testament she is interested in the theme of suffering in antiquity, women in early Christianity, Petrine literature, historiography, contemporary philosophy, the work of Michel Foucault, disability studies, feminist hermeneutics, and post-colonial theory. Meghan’s second book is about the conceptualization of gender, disability and the body in the early Christian apocalypses (Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Hell, Yale University Press, 2021).
She is the recipient of grants and awards from the Jacob K. Javits foundation, the Society of Biblical Literature, Yale Divinity School, and Emory University. Dr. Henning has been interviewed by the Daily Beast, has written for Christian Century, and has appeared in a documentary for the National Geographic Channel, and on CNN.
Alison L. Joseph, Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture
EFSR Board Member
Alison L. Joseph is Senior Editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture. Her research explores the processes by which the Hebrew Bible was produced, bringing together historiographical, literary, and gender criticism as it illuminates the author/redactor’s role in interpreting and rewriting earlier texts. Her current project, Damning Dinah: The Priestly Battle against Intermarriage, looks at intermarriage and women’s sexuality in the Hebrew Bible and explores how late authorial voices reflect a growing concern with foreign infiltration. Her first book, Portrait of the Kings: The Davidic Prototype in Deuteronomistic Poetics (Fortress, 2015), received the 2016 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She is co-editor of Reading Other Peoples’ Texts: Social Identity and the Reception of Authoritative Traditions (Bloomsbury, 2020). She earned her PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Research Interests: Sexuality and gender in the Hebrew Bible, the Bible in pop culture, biblical historiography, feminist historiography.
Read Alison’s FSR Blog posts.
Jennifer Maidrand, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
EFSR Board Member
Samira K. Mehta, University of Colorado Boulder
EFSR Co-Editor
Samira K. Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and of Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Blended Family in the United States (University of
North Carolina Press, 2018) was a National Jewish book award finalist. Mehta’s current academic book project, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality and Contraception in Tri-Faith America examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-twentieth century to the present and is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. Her book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2023. Mehta also is the primary investigator for a Henry Luce Foundation funded project called Jews of Color: Histories and Futures. She serves on the board of eFeminist Studies in Religion and as a Creative Editor at the journal American Religion. She holds degrees from Swarthmore College. Harvard University, and Emory University. You can find her online at @samirakmehta (Twitter) and at www.samiramehta.com.
Angela N. Parker, McAfee School of Theology
EFSR Board Member
Angela N. Parker is the Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek at McAfee. She received her B.A. in Religion & Philosophy from Shaw University (2008), her M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School (2008-2010) and her Ph.D. in Bible, Culture, & Hermeneutics (New Testament focus) from Chicago Theological Seminary (2015). Before this position, Dr. Parker was Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology for 4 years. While at The Seattle School, Dr. Parker received the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion’s ESF New Scholar Award (2nd Place) for her article “One Womanist’s View of Racial Reconciliation in Galatians.” She teaches courses in New Testament, Greek Exegesis, the Gospel of Mark, the Corinthians Correspondence, and the Gospel of John. She is also working on a new course that engages womanist and feminist hermeneutics unto preaching.
In 2021, Dr. Parker’s book entitled If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority is slated for release by Eerdmans Publishing. In this work, Dr. Parker argues that the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility serve as tools of White supremacist authoritarianism. In another forthcoming book entitled Bodies, Violence, & Emotions: A Womanist Study of the Gospel of Mark, Dr. Parker thinks through the issue of imperial violence and its effects on the bodies of Jesus, John the Baptizer, and the woman suffering in a flow of blood in Mark 5. This study allows Dr. Parker to engage real lived experiences of violence and emotions in contemporary society. Dr. Parker is also the author of articles entitled “Reading Mary Magdalene with Stacey Abrams,” “Feminized-Minoritized Paul? A Womanist Reading of Paul’s Body in 1 Corinthians,” and “And the Word Became. . . Gossip? Unhinging the Samaritan Woman in the Age of #MeToo.”
In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Parker serves as co-chair for the Paul & Politics Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature and is a committee member of SBL’s Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible as well as a committee member of the American Academy of Religion’s Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities Committee.
Michal Raucher, Rutgers University
EFSR Board Member
Michal Raucher an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. Her research lies at the intersection of Israel studies, Jewish ethics, and the anthropology of women in Judaism. As a Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Raucher conducted ethnographic research on reproductive ethics of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish women in Israel. She has been awarded grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation for anthropological research, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Crown Family Foundation. Drawing on this research, Michal will publish her first book, Birthing Ethics: Reproductive Ethics among Haredi Women in Jerusalem with Indiana University Press in 2020.
Professor Raucher’s second book is titled Tapping on the Stained Glass Ceiling: the Ordination of Orthodox Jewish Women in Israel and America. This book surrounds the recent ordination of women in Orthodoxy, comparing the phenomenon in Israel and America. Research for this book has been supported by the Israel Institute, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the American Academy of Religion, and the University of Cincinnati. Michal has also published on sexuality and gender in Judaism, religion and bioethics, abortion legislation in Israel, and female religious advisors on the Internet.
Dr. Raucher has been an assistant professor of Israel and Modern Jewish Thought in the Department of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, a fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center, and Yale University’s Center for Bioethics. She has consulted for the United Nations Population Fund, where she worked with colleagues from around the world on improving reproductive and sexual rights and health for women and children. Michal earned her PhD in Religious Studies with a concentration in religious ethics and anthropology from Northwestern University. She has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania in Bioethics, and graduated from the Joint Program with The Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, earning a BA in Hebrew Bible and a BA in Religion.
Read Michal’s FSR Blog posts.
Tamisha A Tyler, Bethany Theological Seminary
EFSR Co-Editor
Tamisha A. Tyler, MDiv, is the former Director of ARC: Art Religion and Culture and PhD candidate in theology and culture. Her work establishes methodologies in the field of Theopoetics, situated in the work of Octavia Butler. Tamisha is also cofounder of Kinship Commons, a company that resources worship cultivators of color. A dynamic speaker and facilitator, she teaches in the areas of culture, community, and art, and works with several organizations including Level Ground, Feminism and Religion, and currently serves as a faculty and board member of Grunewald Guild. We’re not working, she enjoys good food and good friends, karaoke, and travel.
Kayla Renée Wheeler, Xavier University
EFSR Board Member
Kayla Renée Wheeler is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies with a concentration in Islam in America from the University of Iowa in 2017. Her research explores Black Muslim women’s material culture, digital religion, and contemporary Islam in the Americas. She is writing a book entitled, Fashioning Black Islam, which provides a history of Black Muslim fashion in the United States from the 1930s to the present. She is also working on a digital humanities project, Mapping Malcolm’s Boston, which explores Malcolm X’s life in Boston from the 1940s to 1950s. Dr. Wheeler is the curator of the award-winning Black Islam Syllabus.
Karri Alldredge, New York University
EFSR Board Member
Karri Alldredge is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. She earned her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity from Drew University. Her research interests include queer hermeneutics, postcolonial trauma theory, womanist-feminist dialogical interpretation, and critical race theory. Whipple is committed to working on issues of gender-based violence, LGBTQ+ rights, and media rights with faith communities, nonprofits, and United Nations’ NGOs.
EFSR Co-Editing Team
- Samira K. Mehta, Co-Editor, University of Colorado Boulder
- Tamisha Tyler, Co-Editor, Bethany Theological Seminary
- Kimi Bryson, EFSR Submissions Editor/Web Director, Rutgers University
Current Board Members
- Maytha Alhassen, University of Southern California
- Toni Bond
- Alejandro Escalante, King’s College London
- Midori E. Hartman, Drew University Theological School
- Meghan R. Henning, University of Dayton
- Alison Joseph, The Jewish Theological Seminary
- Yohana Junker, Claremont School of Theology
- Jennifer Maidrand, Drew Theological School
- Angela N. Parker, McAfee School of Theology
- Michal Raucher, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University
- Kayla Renée Wheeler
- Karri Whipple, New York University
Past Board Members
- Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Earlham School of Religion
- Carolyn Davis, Center for American Progress
- Alejandro Escalante, University of Edinburgh
- Mary Hunt, WATER
- Yohana Junker, Claremont School of Theology
- Nami Kim, Spelman College
- Gabriella Lettini, Starr King School for the Ministry
- Joseph Marchal, Ball State University
- Stephanie May, First Parish in Wayland (UUA)
- Kate Ott, Drew University Theological School
- Melissa Pagán, Mount Saint Mary’s University
- Susanne Scholz, Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University
- Shanell T. Smith, Hartford Seminary
- Najeeba Syeed, Claremont School of Theology
- Emilie Townes, Vanderbilt Divinity School
- Daisy Vargas, University of Arizona
- Michelle Voss Roberts, Wake Forest University
- Deborah Whitehead, University of Colorado Boulder
- Jasmin Zine, Wilfrid Laurier University
If you are interested in learning more about the the role and responsibilities of the EFSR Board, see the Board FAQs below.