Cheryl Kirk-Duggan

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology and Women’s studies at Shaw University Divinity School (Raleigh, NC). She holds a doctorate from Baylor University. The 2009 Shaw University Excellence in Research Recipient is author and editor of over twenty books and numerous articles; is an Ordained Elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Her research and teaching is interdisciplinary, liberationist, theoretical, and practical. She garnered activists/scholars to respond to Katrina in The Sky is Crying: Race, Class, and Natural Disaster (Abingdon, 2006). She works in interfaith and ecumenical contexts. Her forthcoming co-authored work with Marlon Hall, is Wake Up!: Hip Hop, Christianity, and the Black Church, from Abingdon Press, due out June, 2011. Known for her 6 P’s: professor, preacher, priest, prophet, poet, and performer, Dr. Kirk-Duggan is an avid athlete and musician, who completed her first marathon (2010), and practices hot yoga. She loves to tinker with her flowers, embraces laughter as her best medicine, with the quest for a foundational healthy, holistic, spiritual life. She resides in Raleigh with her beloved husband, Mike.

Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan

Jeffrey Kuan became Dean of the Drew Theological School and Professor of Hebrew Bible in 2011. A scholar of ancient Israelite and Near Eastern history, Dr. Kuan’s current research addresses Asian and Asian American hermeneutics, as well as approaches to biblical instruction for the churches. He is currently completing a commentary on the biblical book of Joshua.

Kuan began his career serving as an associate pastor from 1980 to 1983 in Malaysia. In 2002, he became an ordained elder and full member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Since 2008, he has served as the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the UMC’s General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. In 2004, the Reconciling Ministries of the California-Nevada Annual Conference named him the winner of the Turtle Award for “sticking his neck out” for the LGBTQ community.

Dean Kuan previously served on the faculties of the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the South East Asia Graduate School’s Regional Faculty. He also served as Old Testament Editor for the multi-volume New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible from 2006 to 2009. He currently serves on the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Tat-siong Benny Liew

Tat-siong Benny Liew is currently Professor of New Testament at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.  His is interested in transdisciplinary readings of the New Testament that take into consideration race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism/postcolonialism. In addition to being the author of Politics of Parousia (Brill, 1999) and What is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics (University of Hawaii, 2008), Liew has edited (with Gale Yee) The Bible in Asian American Literature (SBL, 2002), (with Randall Bailey and Fernando Segovia) They Were All Together in One Place? (SBL, 2009), and Postcolonial Interventions (Sheffield Phoenix, 2009).

Kenneth Ngwa

Kenneth Ngwa is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Drew University Theological School in Madison, New Jersey. His research interests are in the areas of ancient Israelite Wisdom Literature, African Proverbs, Orality, the History of Bible Reception, Narrative Ethics, and the Exodus story. His publications include The Hermeneutics of the ‘Happy’ Ending in Job 42:7-17 (2005) and a number of articles, including Did Job Suffer for Nothing? The Ethics of Piety, Presumption and the Reception of Disaster in the Prologue of Job (JSOT, March 2009); What do People say the Bible says? And you, What do you Say? (TTR 14/2, 2011); and Haggai in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora ed., Hugh Page (2010).

Born in Cameroon, Dr. Ngwa is an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon and a board member of the African Renaissance Ambassador, a non-governmental organization working for the continuous development of African continent. He enjoys spending time with his son Michael and playing soccer.

Fernando F. Segovia

Fernando F. Segovia is the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University, where he is also a member of the Center for Latin American Studies. Professor Segovia has taught at Vanderbilt since 1984-1985, after a first appointment in the Department of Theology at Marquette University, where he taught for seven years.  He earned his doctoral degree in Early Christian Studies at the University of Notre Dame under the direction of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.

Professor Segovia has been active in Biblical Studies and Theological Studies.  As a critic, his primary areas of interest and research at present include: method and theory in interpretation; ideological criticism and cultural studies; non-Western and minority traditions of interpretation; and Johannine Studies.  As a theologian, his primary area of expertise and publication are: non-Western theologies; minority theologies; and Latino religion and theology.  Among his recent works are the following: a volume coedited with R. S. Sugirtharajah, A Postcolonial Commentary of the New Testament Writings (T&T Clark) and a volume coedited with Randall Bailey and Benny Tat-Siong Liew, They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism (Semeia Studies).  At present, Professor Segovia is engaged in a variety of ongoing projects, from works on minority and postcolonial criticisms to works on Latino/a theology and the Cuban problematic.  Among his forthcoming works are The Future of the Biblical Past, coedited with Roland Boer, and Latino/a Criticism, coedited with Francisco Lozada, both for Semeia Studies.

Beyond his scholarly work, Professor Segovia has served as dissertation director for close to thirty students now, has participated in the governance of various professional societies and sat on the editorial board of many journals, has formed part of many academic and ecclesial projects throughout the world, and has lectured extensively nationally as well as internationally.