Black Scholars Matter Task Force

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The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is committed to the support and professional development of its student members. In affirmation of this support, the Student Advisory Board (SAB, previously the Student Advisory Group) was officially launched at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society in Philadelphia, PA. The establishment and ongoing promotion of SAB testifies to the Society’s dedication to fostering student membership and participation in the activities of the Society.

SAB functions as a Board within the Society’s governance structure, and as such is composed of appointed individuals, both student members of the Society and a faculty liaison, who work to advise the SBL Council regarding issues and opportunities relating to student membership and participation in the Society as a whole. SAB also has as its core mandate the coordination of student participation across all Society activities, committees, and programs in an effort to foster opportunities for student participation and leadership development. In order to achieve this mandate, SAB works to encourage student attendance and active participation at regional, national, and international congresses, with a focus on paper presentations and professional skills development; to link SBL student membership to effective, working resources for skills advancement, facilitated through the development and maintenance of communication tools such as a webpage and newsletter; and to provide support in the development, review, and evaluation of SBL policies and procedures as relating to student membership and participation and to make recommendations, where appropriate, to SBL Council on these matters.

Please contact Natalie Reynoso if you have questions or would like to volunteer to become an On-Campus Student Representative.

Member	Office	Year of Service	Years Appointed
Camille Angelo	Member at Large	2	2018–2020
Michelle Eastwood	International Representative	1	2019–2021
Kirsty Jones	Vice Chair	2	2018–2020
LaToya Leary	Regional Representative Coordinator	1	2020–2021
Ian Mills	Member at Large	2	2018–2020
Sarah Porter	Chair	3	2017–2020
Natalie Reynoso	On-Campus Representative Coordinator	1	2019–2021
April Hoelke Simpson	Technology Coordinator	1	2019–2021
Angela Zautcke	Project Manager	2	2018–2020

	Camille Leon Angelo is a PhD student in Ancient Christianity at Yale University. Her work examines the body in late antique Christian cultural discourse using an interdisciplinary approach drawn from art history, archaeology, social history, and gender and sexuality studies. Currently, Camille is analyzing the archaeological remains of several early Christian sites in the eastern Mediterranean to elucidate patterns of ritual movement and embodied worship practices in late antiquity. In her role as Member at Large, Camille seeks to provide support to and develop programing for graduate students.
	Michelle Eastwood is a PhD candidate within the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia, based at Catholic Theological College. She is developing a feminist reading of Psalm 71, focusing on the key themes of ageing and shame. Her big question is ‘what happens when we hear the biblical text spoken from a female perspective?’ Michelle’s work is connected to her work at the Centre for Human Ageing which is exploring ageing from the perspectives of theology, spirituality, pastoral care and ethics. Her wider research interests are gender and sexuality, liturgy and worship, and developing authentic Christian community. She has a background in education, and her first degree is in psychology and history. Michelle likes to bring diverse ideas together with a twist to develop novel understandings of the biblical text. As the International Representative on the SAB, she is pulling together a panel for ISBL in Adelaide and hopes to bring a different perspective to discussions of the student experience.
	Kirsty Jones is a PhD student at Georgetown University where she specializes in disability and the senses in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Her work focuses on the use of disability and sensory rhetoric, and the depictions of disability in the text. In her role as Vice Chair she hopes to increase representation of and participation by students in the SBL, to support students with disabilities to participate as fully as they desire and to equip members to be cognizant of accessibility issues in their work. Kirsty is excited to work with the SAB and SBL teams to see change in the institute and academy for all students and scholars.
	LaToya Leary is a PhD student in Religions of Western Antiquity at Florida State University. Her research examines the treatment of various bodies in texts from the Hebrew Bible, second temple period, and early Christian corpus in effort to consider socially disabling states in antiquity and its role in identity formation. In her role as Regional Representative Coordinator, LaToya aids in effective communication between SBL Regional Coordinators and Regional Representatives to promote SBL events and to better serve the needs of graduate students. She hopes to significantly improve communication between graduate students and SBL student and governing boards and is eager to develop ideas that will assist the Student Advisory Board in better advocating for graduate students.
	Ian Mills is a PhD candidate in New Testament at Duke University. He studies gospel literature, focusing especially on the second century. In his role as Member at Large, Ian is organizing a panel on publishing in graduate school and cooperating in the management of the SAB social media accounts. As an avowed lover of academic conferences, Ian hopes to be part of making this potentially stressful and challenging event a positive experience for more graduate students.
	Sarah Porter is a PhD candidate in New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard University with a secondary field in Archaeology. Her research centers on early Christian funerary and memorial contexts, particularly with attention to urban planning, landscape, sense, the body, and affect, and her dissertation examines these themes in fourth-century Antioch. She is also interested in spatial, queer, and affect theory more generally; cultural heritage; and the teaching strategies of contemporary public spaces like museums. As Chair, Sarah works to manage the interests of graduate students by liaising with the Society of Biblical Literature, organizing student-centered programming at the annual meeting, and supporting the work of the other board members in their work with technological, regional, and on-campus presence and outreach.
	Natalie Reynoso is a PhD student in History of Christianity at Fordham University. Her research examines connections between body, identity, and death; more specifically, her work focuses on death as an embodied transition in early Christian martyrdom narratives within the Syriac and Coptic traditions. Natalie’s interrogation of early Christian thought avails itself of the tools of critical theory, and particularly queer and gender theory to reconfigure the relationship between two related conceptual constellations: body, identity, and selfhood on the one hand; and sex, gender, and sexuality on the other. In her role as On-Campus Student Representative Coordinator, Natalie maintains regular communication with On-Campus Student Representatives and their respective institutions in order to support OSRs in encouraging student participation in annual and regional SBL meetings. In her time as OSR Coordinator, Natalie hopes to help create a more expansive network and provide professional development resources for SBL student members to benefit from.
	April Hoelke Simpson is a PhD candidate in New Testament at Southern Methodist University. She is writing her dissertation on the Gospel of Mark, focusing especially on the latter chapters of the Gospel. April explores the ways in which, through the narrative arc, Mark's author depicts Jesus as gaining, losing, and regaining honor. Of particular importance to her project are first-century CE notions of honor in the world of the Roman Empire, including not only how honor was frequently defined within Roman culture but also the ways in which such notions of honor were contested. As Technology Coordinator, April works to promote student involvement in the SBL, bolster awareness of such student involvement, and feature student-centered panels at the Annual Meeting.
	Angela Zautcke is a PhD student of Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity (New Testament emphasis) at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests focus on the gospels and how they have been influenced by Second Temple Judaism and the broader Greco-Roman milieu. In her role as Project Manager, Angela takes the minutes during SAB meetings and assists in other duties as needed, such as organizing panels for the SBL Annual Meeting. She is excited to use her role on the SAB to facilitate helpful professional development opportunities for students, and to foster a collegial and supportive community of student scholars that can carry over into their future careers.