Abstract
The collaboration resulted in Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (2010), as well as an archive of the public conference on the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project's website.1 The team of scholars, artists, and activists investigated this issue beginning with the Bible and the ancient Near East and extending through to early Christianity; the Talmud; early Islamic jurisprudence; sixteenth-century Valencia; US slavery, including the use of the Bible in antebellum slavery debates; contemporary incarceration practices in the US; welfare reform; reparations for slavery; contemporary cultural depictions of slavery; a reading of the Bible and the Qur'an on slavery by a formerly enslaved woman; and poetry inspired by these themes. For any other period of history on which I or we work, we need both foundational research and innovative questions. [...]many scholars may already be contributing to the larger project of the "public health" aspect of biblical studies.