—Princeton Seminary’s Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, the William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament and Exegesis, and Freda Ann Gardner, the Thomas W. Synnott Professor of Christian Education Emerita and director of the School of Christian Education Emerita, to Deliver Lecture October 27—

Princeton, NJ, October 12, 2011–Princeton Seminary’s Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, the William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, and Freda Ann Gardner, the Thomas W. Synott Professor of Christian Education Emerita and director of the School of Christian Education Emerita, will give the 2011–2012 Frederick Neumann Memorial Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary on Thursday, October 27 at 1:30 p.m. Titled “In the Beginning Male and Female: Then She Came to Seminary,” the lecture will take place in Miller Chapel and is free and open to the public.

Listen, laugh, lament, and celebrate as Sakenfeld and Gardner share stories of early experiences at Princeton Seminary. The lecture will be scripted in storytelling style, with a few facts and figures to set the stage.  Join in remembering the past and claiming the future!

Sakenfeld earned her M.S. at the University of Rhode Island, her B.D. at Harvard University Divinity School, her Ph.D. at Harvard University, and an honorary S.T.D. from Hastings College. Alongside her current position, she served for twenty-five years (1984–2009) as director of the Seminary’s Ph.D. studies program. Her research focuses on biblical narratives concerning the premonarchical period and on feminist biblical hermeneutics. She has a special interest in the way Asian Christian women interpret Old Testament stories about women.

Sakenfeld served as a member of the New Revised Standard Version Translation Committee and as a coeditor of the Oxford Study Bible (1992) and Reading the Bible as Women: Perspectives from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Semeia 78 (1997).  She has published many articles on feminist interpretation, with a special focus on voices from diverse cultural contexts. In 2007, she was president of the Society of Biblical Literature, has been a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches since 1999, and served on editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature, Theology Today, and Word and World. She is currently a board member of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly.  

Gardner received a B.S. from the State University of New York Teachers College at Plattsburg, an M.R.E. from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (now Union Presbyterian Seminary) in Richmond, Virginia, and an honorary D.D. from Bloomfield College. She joined the faculty of Princeton Seminary in the fall of 1961, where she was the only woman on the faculty for nine years until Katherine Doob Sakenfeld joined in 1970. In 1979 she became the director of the School of Christian Education and served until her retirement in 1992 as the Thomas W. Synott Professor of Christian Education, the first tenured woman faculty member at the Seminary.

 She has coauthored Living Alone, with Herbert Anderson, and has written extensively for church-related periodicals and special issues. An ordained elder, she currently serves on the Session of the First Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York. Over the years, Gardner has served and taught at presbytery, synod, and General Assembly levels of the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 1985, she was honored by the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators as Educator of the Year and in 1995 she was presented with the Distinguished Alumni/ae Award by the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (now Union Presbyterian Seminary).

Since her retirement she has preached, keynoted, led workshops at all levels of the church and is currently on the board of the Capital Region Theological Center in Albany and the Jarvie Commonweal Service of New York City.

Established in 1983 by Dr. Edith Neumann in memory of her husband, this annual lecture discusses topics appropriate to the broad theological interests of Dr. Frederick Neumann (1899–1967)—philosopher, biblical scholar, missionary, and pastor.

For more information, visit www.ptsem.edu or call the Communications/Publications Office at 609.497.7760.

Princeton Theological Seminary was founded in 1812, the first seminary established by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.  It is the largest Presbyterian Seminary in the country, with more than 500 students in six graduate degree programs.