Abstract
As womanist theology and ethics celebrate almost thirty years in the academy, it is important to lift up the valuable contributions womanists and nonwomanists alike have made toward the development of the interreligious, global-reaching, and interdisciplinary field of womanist religious thought. Acknowledging the various streams of womanism that flow from the North American context and the appropriation of Walker’s term “womanist,” as well as the streams of thought emerging from African and Africana literary movements, this chapter reviews various understandings of the womanist movement as a whole. It also proposes an expansion of womanist discourse and introduces a third wave of womanist religious thought. Some of the hallmarks of this wave include expanding the interreligious landscape of womanist religious thought, focusing on the global links within the field, and taking special note of the connections between African and African American womanist literary and scholarly writers, thus encouraging interdisciplinary study in order to expand the traditional boundaries of the field.
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Notes
Susan Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 11–12.
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Ifeoma Okoye, Men without Ears (London: Longman, 1984).
Clenora Hudson-Weems, Africana Womanist Literary Theory (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2004), 18.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Introducing African Women’s Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001).
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995).
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).
Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar, On Being Church: African Women’s Voices and Visions (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005).
Wangari Maathai, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (New York: Lantern Books, 2003), and Unbowed: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2006).
Rachel E. Harding, Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000);
Tracey Hucks, “I Smoothed the Way, I Opened Doors Women in the Yoruba-Orisha Tradition of Trinidad,” in Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power and Performance, ed. Ruth Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 19–36;
Dianne Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Carol B. Duncan, “From ‘Force-Ripe’ to ‘Womanish/ist’: Black Girlhood and African Diasporan Feminist Consciousness,” in Floyd-Thomas, Deeper Shades of Purple, 29–27; Debra Mubashshir Majeed, “Womanism Encounters Islam: A Muslim Scholar Considers the Efficacy of a Method Rooted in the Academy and the Church,” in Floyd-Thomas, Deeper Shades of Purple, 38–53;
Arisika Rasak, “Her Blue Body: A Pagan Reading of Alice Walker’s Womanism.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California, November 2007);
and Linda A. Thomas, Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).
Emilie M. Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 2.
Jan Willis, “Buddhism and Race: An African American Baptist-Buddhist Perspective,” in Buddhist Women on the Edge: Contemporary Perspectives from the Western Frontier, ed. Marianne Dress (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1996), 81–91. In this work, Willis describes how two religious systems found within Vajrayana Buddhism and a Baptist form of Christianity inform her religious and ethical worldview.
Akasha Hull, Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001), 1–2.
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American People, 2nd ed. (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), 11.
Ibid., 27. Historian Charles H. Long’s argument about the significance of the African religious base for the study of African American religion also provides invaluable insights. See Charles H. Long, “Perspective for a Study of Afro-American Religion in the United States,” in Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Aurora, CO: Davies, 1995), 187–198.
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© 2010 Melanie L. Harris
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Harris, M.L. (2010). Third-Wave Womanism: Expanding Womanist Discourse, Making Room for Our Children. In: Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113930_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113930_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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