Semeia 47 is a groundbreaking collection of essays that presents early work by African American and Asian biblical scholars whose influence on biblical hermeneutics pushed the academy beyond historical critical methods toward readings that engaged struggles for justice, self-determination, and freedom. Katie Geneva Cannon, Kwok Pui Lan, and Vincent L. Wimbush explore theoretical frameworks for biblical interpretation. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Renita Weems, Clarice J. Martin, and Sheila Briggs’s readings of texts from Psalms, Hosea, Acts, and Philippians demonstrate liberating responses that challenge Euro-American interpretation and racial rhetoric.

Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018) was Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Social Ethics at
Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. She was a womanist theologian, ethicist, and the first African American woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Cannon was the author of Black Womanist Ethics (1988) and Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (1995). She coedited The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology (2014) and Womanist Theological Reader (2011).