Back from sabbatical leave, Assistant Research Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies Willie J. Jennings shares the following favorite titles from his bookshelves.

An ordained Baptist minister, Jennings teaches in the areas of systematic theology and black church and cultural studies. During the fall semester he is teaching two courses, “The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Anthropology”—an exploration of the Christian doctrine of creation—and “Slavery and Obedience: Theological Explorations,” a new course that examines the theological architecture of Christian obedience.

Imagining Redemption
     by David Kelsey
     An insightful treatment of redemption and suffering

Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology
     by Marilyn McCord Adams
     A short course in Christology and the question of human evil

Communion and Otherness
     by John D. Zizioulas
     An interesting effort to deal with questions of difference from an Eastern Orthodox
     perspective, this volume includes some of the author’s most important essays.

The World Republic of Letters
     by Pascale Casanova
     A brilliant and powerful account of the formation of world literary space and the
     politics of world literature

Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference
     in the Renaissance Empires
     edited by Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan
     This important set of essays explores the relation of race and Christianity in
      the early colonialist period.

Measuring America
     by Andro Linklater
     This fine little book is a wonderful account of the creation of the grid system that
     defined the nature of land and space in America.

The Way of the Human Being
     by Calvin Luther Martin

Wisdom Sits in Places
     by Keith Basso

The Old Way: A Story of the First People
     by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Martin’s and Basso’s books explore Native American sensibilities regarding space and identity in very powerful ways. Thomas’s book is a similar work, but looks at space and identity from the perspective of the so-called Bushmen of the Kalahari. I read these books in conjunction with rereading Vine Deloria’s epic text God Is Red.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography
     by Arnold Rampersad

A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars
     by Cristina Rathbone

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West
      by Mark Lilla