The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School, is one of the first recipients of the Outstanding Mentor Award of the Society of Biblical Literature and its Committee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession (CUREMP).
The announcement said, “The SBL and its Committee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession (CUREMP) are delighted to announce the 2020 recipients of SBL’s Outstanding Mentor Award—Drs. Wil Gafney and Fernando Segovia. CUREMP launched the award this year to honor scholars of color who provide exceptional mentoring to other scholars by helping them to develop important professional networks and offering invaluable support in the process of navigating intricacies of the guild. Gafney and Segovia were selected for this inaugural award as a result of the nomination process and in recognition of the significant ways they are influencing the field of biblical studies through their scholarship, teaching, and mentoring of other scholars in various parts of the world. Congratulations to them.”
Gafney is the author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne, a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah in the Wisdom series, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel, and co-editor of The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible.
Read Gafney’s contribution to the JBL Forum Black Lives Matter for Critical Biblical Scholarship
The other honoree is Dr. Fernando Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.
“Among his publications, he is the author of Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins, editor of Interpreting Beyond Borders, and co-editor of Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies and Toward Minority Biblical Criticism: They Were All Together in One Place. In 2014, Dr. Segovia was the President of the Society of Biblical Literature.”
To learn more about the work of CUREMP and the Outstanding Mentoring Award, visit SBL’s committee and award pages.