Davidson Promoted
03-15-2019
At its meeting Friday, March 1, 2019 McCormick Theological Seminary’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted to promote the Rev. Dr. Steed Vernyl Davidson from Associate Professor to Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
President David Crawford said, “We are blessed by the wisdom and creativity Steed has already brought as Dean, a teacher, and a scholar and are thrilled the board has enthusiastically affirmed the faculty’s recommendation to promote him to full professor. McCormick is grateful for all that Steed does for us, for the academy, for theological education, and the church. We are blessed.” In the fall of 2018, Davidson was also inaugurated and currently serves as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.
Said Davidson, “I appreciate the affirmation from my colleagues and the Board of Trustees’ regarding my academic work. This has been a long developmental journey that continues in with my new responsibilities as Dean. I am thrilled about the possibilities of moving forward and deepening my scholarship at McCormick.”
Trustee and Education Policy and Program Chair, the Rev. Dr. Ozzie E. Smith, Jr. stated, “Steed brings deep Biblical knowledge, an urgency about the need for different lenses through which to read and interpret the Old Testament, and has the acumen to implement appropriate curricular changes at McCormick and in the field. Not only does Steed Davidson sound like he knows what he is talking about, he knows what he’s talking about!”
Davidson is the author of Empire and Exile: Postcolonial Readings of Selected Texts of the Book of Jeremiah, as well as Writing/Reading the Bible in Postcolonial Perspective, and a co-editor of Islands, Islanders and the Bible: RumiNations. He is currently co-authoring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: A Guide for the Perplexed and co-editing Prophetic Otherness, both of which should be completed in 2019. He has authored various essays that explore the Hebrew Bible from postcolonial, gendered, and several critical perspectives.
Davidson, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, earned a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He received a S.T.M. from Boston University, a M.A. from the University of the West Indies, a Diploma of Ministerial Studies from the United Theological College of the West Indies, and a B.A. from the University of the West Indies.
A member of the Society of Biblical Literature, Davidson serves as the General Editor of Semeia Studies. In addition, he Chairs the steering committee of the Israelite Prophetic Literature Section and serves on the Bible and Empire as well as the Reading/Writing Jeremiah program units of the SBL. His other professional memberships include the Society for the Study of Black Religions. He also serves on the editorial boards of Biblical Interpretation and Black Theology: An International Journal. Davidson is an ordained elder within the United Methodist Church (New York Annual Conference).
