Despite our desperate, eternal attempt to separate , contain, and mend, categories always leak. 
-- Trinh T. Minh-Ha (1989: 94) 
 

The taxonomy by which this brief introduction is organized should not be understood in a thoroughly rigid way, for, as Trinh T. Minh-Ha points out, categories always leak.  We have read all feminist and womanist readings of biblical texts as in some measure shaped by institutional constraints, constraints producing resisting readings. In so doing, we have been conscious that different readers face distinct institutional pressures in varying degrees. For some, the religious institution in which they work, think, and live shapes the contours of their constraint and resistance. For others, the academic institution -- be it a particular educational institution (college, university, seminary) or a discipline (like that of biblical studies itself) -- provides the framework against which resistance is cast. For still others, social institutions -- the family , marriage, or sexuality -- constrain and confine, and the practice of reading against the grain becomes a resisting practice in that context. It is our position that feminist and womanist readings are always, in some measure, acts of resistance against some form of institutional constraint. Therefore, the outline that follows should not be read as an evolutionary model, pointing toward a utopian, pure form of feminist and womanist interpretation, anything short of which should be understood as false consciousness. Instead, we might remember Françoise Lionnet's appropriation of the concept of métissage, a "sheltering site" allowing for solidarity across differences, a blending together, a weaving, a "crossover politics" of solidarity (Caraway, 171-203). 

Postmodern feminism's contribution to the ongoing feminist critique of the Bible, literature, and religious ideology is characterized by its fundamental challenge to the interpretative frame conventionally placed around the text. Recognizing the constraints imposed by the disciplinary systems, postmodern feminism argues for a valorization of the category of difference as a way to unseat or destabilize the reigning modes of interpretation. Whereas some have argued that postmodern feminisim has avoided questions of power and therefore has removed itself from the fray of real political strugle, postmodern feminist critiques see power residing not only in the everyday relations of domination faced by so many, but in the ideological underpinnings that authorize and sustain those relations of domination ( Butler and Scott; Laura E. Donaldson, 1992; Ebert, 1991; Nicholson). 

The urgency of thinking differences differently, of working for difference and against domination within a feminist and womanist framework is two-fold. First of all, despite some small successes in unveiling phallocentrism and ethnocentrism is some quarters, feminism and womanism remain oppositional discourses at the margins of power institutionally. The ideological force of the phallocentric metanarrative of female sexuality remains powerfully in place; it operates in the figure of Hosea's wanton wife and echoes repetitively in contemporary American public life as the ongoing struggles in public discourse around sexual harassment and rape remind us. Secondly, if perhaps more hopefully, feminism and womanism, because of their double focus on subjectivity and the production of knowledge, offer an ongoing, dialogical, and critical process that maintains a kind of edginess and a refusal to settle or to master. As Elizabeth Weed has put it: "The critical advantage of the feminist project has been that when one area of feminism has settled on a truth, another has emerged to disrupt that truth, to keep at bay truths too easily produced by cultural and political formations ... As long as feminism remains a process of coming to terms but never arriving, always interrogating the very terms it constitutes and never mastering them, it will continue to be a challenging mode of inquiry" (1989:xxxi). It is perhaps this refusal of mastery that is womanism's and feminism's most radical edge, offering not a new system of domination but a continuous critique of all such systems. This refusal creates the only real possibility for rethinking and resignifying difference. 

Aschkenasy, Nehama. Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape.  Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998. 
BS 575 .A78 1998 

Bach, Alice.  Women, Seduction, and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative.  Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 
BS575 .B24 1997 

Bal, Mieke.  Lethal Love:  Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 
A collection of readings showcasing Bal's narratological readings of biblical texts.  Demonstrates the relation between ideological dominance and forms of representation. 
BS 575 .B2913 1987 

Brenner, Athalya, ed.  A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible:  Approaches, Methods, and Strategies.  Sheffield, England:  Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. 
BS521.4 .F465 1997 

Briggs, Sheila.  "Buried with Christ: The Politics of Identity and the Poverty of Interpretation." The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory. Regina Schwartz, ed.  New York: Blackwell, 1990.  276-303. 
An important essay that analyzes intersections of hermeneutical practices with social relationships of domination.  Calls for a form of interpretation that begins to address structures of oppression and the limits of identity politics. 
BS 535 .B66 1990 

Canon, Katie Geneva, and Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, eds.  "Interpretation for Liberation."  Semeia 47.  Atlanta: Scholars. 
Collection of essays that challenge and supplement Euro-American biblical criticism.  Featuring Katie Canon, Kwok Pui-Lan, Vincent Wimbush, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Renita Weems, Clarice Martin, and Sheila Briggs. 
BS 410 .S45 

Cheney, Emily.  Reading Strategies and Gender Dynamics of Biblical Texts:  Selected Texts from the Gospel of Matthew as Case Studies (Thesis).  Vanderbilt University, 1994. 
Divinity Special Collection
BS2575.6 .W65 C446 1994 

________.  She Can Read:  Feminist Reading Strategies for Biblical Narrative.  Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996. 
This volume argues that women can read as women, in contrast to claims that women can only speak and read as men.  In this book she develops three reading strategies for group or  individual study of biblical narrative. 
BS2575.6 .W65 1996 

Cottrell, Jack.  Gender Roles and the Bible:  Creation, the Fall, and Redemption: A Critique of Feminist Biblical Interpretation.  Joplin, MO:  College Press Pub. Co., 1994. 
BS680 .W7 C68 1994 

Dornisch, Loretta. Paul and Third World Women Theologians. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1999. 
BS 2650.2 .D67 1999 

Dube Shomanah, Musa.  Toward a Post-Colonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible.  Thesis (Ph.D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, 1997. 
BS 476 .D834 1997 

Fehribach, Adeline. The Women in the Life of the Bridegroom: A Feminist Historical-Literary Analysis of the Female Characters in the Fourth Gospel.  Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998. 
BS 2615 .W65 F44 1998 

Harder, Lydia Marlene.  Obedience, suspicion and the Gospel of Mark: A Mennonite-Feminist Exploration of Biblical Authority. Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion = Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1998. 
BS 480 .H368 1998 

Haynes, Stephen R. and McKenzie, Steven L., eds.  To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Its Application.  Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.
BS 511.2 .T64 1993 

hooks, bell.  Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989. Book cover image courtesy of Amazon. 
E 185.86 .H74 1989 

James, Stanlie M. and Busia, Abena P.A., eds. Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women.  London: Routledge, 1993. 
Essays from the first Black Feminist Seminar, sponsored by the Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 10-12, 1992. 
HQ 1190 .T47 1993 

Jasper, Alison E. The Shining Garment of the Text: Gendered Readings of John's Prologue.  Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. 
BS 2615.2 .J377 1998 

Kanyoro, Musimbi R.A., ed.  In Search of a Round Table:  Gender, Theology, and Church Leadeship.  Geneva: Published for the Lutheran World Federation by WCC Publications, 1997. 
BV639. W7 I535 1997 

Kwok, Pui-lan.  Discovering the Bible in the Non-biblical World. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995. 
As a Chinese woman, a feminist theologian and a biblical scholar, Pui-lan brings a new perspective and voice to the task of hermeneutics. Her multi-dimensional reading of the Bible draws on a tradition much older than that of the West while it simultaneously incorporates the insights of contemporary feminist and third world theologies. 
BS 521.4 .K96 1995 

________ and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, eds. Women's Sacred Scriptures. London: SCM Press; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998. 
BT 83.55 .W664 1998 

Levine, Amy-Jill  "Hemmed In on Every Side: Jews and Women in the Book of Susanna." Reading from this Place.  Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.. 
BS 476 .R42 1993 

________. "Sacrifice and Salvation: Otherness and Domestication in the Book of Judith." No One Spoke Ill of Her: Essays on Judith. James C. VanderKam, ed. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992. 
BS 1735.2 .N6 1992 

________. Women Like This. New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World.   Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991. 
BS 680 .W7 W57 1991 

Martin, Clarice.  "The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: 'Free Slaves' and 'Subordinate Women.'"  Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Cain Hope Felder, ed.  Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress Press, 1991. 
An important essay on New Testament household codes that reads for gender and race.  Demonstrates the fruitfulness as well as limitations of blending perspectives. 
BS 511.2 .S84 1991 

Minh-ha, Trinh T.  Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 
PN 471 .T75 1989 

Murphy, Cullen.  The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 
BS 680 .W7 M87 1998 

Phillips, Vicki Cass.  Women's Speech and Silence in the Gospel According to Mark. Thesis (Ph.D. in Religion) --Vanderbilt University, 1997. 
BS 2585.2 .P555 1997 

Price, Robert M. The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A Feminist-Critical Scrutiny.  Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars, 1997. 
BS 2589.6 .W43 P75 1997

Rutledge, David.  Reading Marginally:  Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Bible.  Leiden; New York: Brill, 1996. 
BS521.4 .R87 1996 

Schottroff, Luise.  Feministiche Exegese: Forschungsert*age zur Bibel aus der Perspektive von Frauen.  Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995. 
BS521.4 .S368 1995 

________. Feminist Interpretation: The Bible in Women's Perspective. Trans. Martin and Barbara Rumscheidt. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. 
BS 521.4 .S3613 1998 

Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth.  But She Said:  Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation.  Boston: Beacon, 1992. 
Continues Schussler Fiorenza's important effort to bring a sustained, critical feminist perspective to New Testament interpretation.  Develops a rhetorical approach that attempts to bridge the gap between historical and literary interpretations. 
BS 680 .W7 F56 1992 

________. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Groundbreaking work on feminist biblical criticism.  Schussler-Fiorenza offers her own construction of Christian origins that contests the traditional assumptions of androcentric scholarship.  Book cover image courtesy of Amazon. 
BR 129 .F56 1983 

________, ed.  Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction.  New York: Crossroad, 1993. 
A collection of methodological essays on feminist biblical interpretation. 
BS 2379 .S43 1993 

________.  Sharing her Word:  Feminist Biblical Intepretation in Context.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 
BS521.4 .S38 1998 

Selvidge, Marla J. Notorious Voices: Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 1550-1920.  New York: Continuum, 1996. 
BS 521.4 .S45 1996 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman's Bible. Great Minds Series. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1999. 
99800044376 (on order) 

Tolbert, Mary Ann.  Reconstituting the World [sound recording]:  Feminism, Power, and the Bible.  Unpublished lecture delivered before the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, 24 March 1994. 
Divinity Special Collection
Cassette SP-38 

Wainwright, Elaine Mary. Shall We Look for Another? A Feminist Reading of the Matthean Jesus. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998. 
BT 202 .W28 1998 

Washington, Harold, Susan Lochrie, and Pamela Thimmes. Escaping Eden: New Feminist Perspectives on the Bible. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 
BS 521.4 .E73 1999 

Weems, Renita. Just A Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women's Relationships in the Bible. San Diego, CA: LuraMedia, 1998. Book cover image courtesy of Amazon. 
BS 575 .W39 1988 

________. "Reading Her Way through the Struggle: African American Women and the Bible." Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Cain Hope Felder, ed.  Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress Press, 1991. 
Provides important historical examples of the use African American women have put the Bible.  Examines reading strategies in the face of multiple structures of oppression. 
BS 511.2 .S84 1991