Follow-Up to WATERtalk
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 1 PM ET
with Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite on SURFACING:
A Kristin Ginelli Mystery (Resource Publication, 2024)
WATER thanks Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite for presenting her latest mystery novel, SURFACING: A Kristin Ginelli Mystery (Resource Publication, 2024). It follows several other volumes in which she explores contemporary ethical themes using a compelling whodunnit. This is a must read, great for holiday relaxing as well as preparing for ethical conversation in the New Year. We at WATER are so fortunate to have Susan offer these books for our consideration and enjoyment.
The video can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-NvhCvMz4A
The book can be ordered from Amazon or from the publisher: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385210619/surfacing/
INTRODUCTION:
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is no stranger to WATER. She was with us in April 2016 to discuss her very powerful ethics book Women’s Bodies as Battlefield. She returned in September 2020 in her new capacity as a mystery writer, exploring feminist theo-ethical concerns through fiction. The book that time, When Demons Float was part of a series about a feminist detective turned philosophy professor whose daring do and smarts combine to address contemporary issues on campus—racism, poverty, ethnic oppression, and now “Free Speech.”
Today Susan brings us the same detective/professor, the fair Kristin Ginelli, a Smithie with a partner who is a doctor who bears an uncanny resemblance to the author. I digress.
Susan is Professor Emerita and President Emerita at Chicago Theological Seminary where she taught for twenty years before serving as the 11th president from 1998-2008. Prior to the Presidency, she was also director of the PhD Center for five years. Her PhD is from Duke.
An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, she is the author or editor of at least 16 books. In retirement—whatever that is for her—she maintains an active presence in print, for years at her local Colorado newspaper, Washington Post of happy memory, and other media outlets now including a Substack, “No Fear: Religion and Politics” that I read religiously. It can be found at https://susanthistlethwaitewaite.substack.com/p/save-us-from-political-retribution.
Her works include Interfaith JustPeacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and #OccupytheBible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power. In 1999, Orbis Press published the tenth-anniversary edition of Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, a work Thistlethwaite edited with Mary Potter Engel which is one of the most widely used theology textbooks in the US.
Susan is one of the founders and a former trustee of Faith in Public Life. She has also consulted for the Carter Center “Scholars in Action” and the Women, Religion, Violence, and Power program.
She has been working as a white woman on anti-racism and against white supremacy before many of us knew what it was. She has explored violence against women from every ghastly angle. She has taught theology and ethics with a deep commitment to remaking the world—environment, social relations, the relation between religion and politics—a task she continues through literature. Her knowledge of trauma theory and the practice of dealing with it adds dimensions to today’s work.
Here is my brief blurb from the back cover of Surfacing:
“Murders make headlines, but discussion of free speech is a more subdued, often obscured topic. The two go hand in hand in this suspenseful novel. A man is found dead and, as is now quite common, disruptive threats are considered protected speech. Detective/Professor Kristen Ginelli and colleagues figure out the murder and push university reform. Policy changes can save lives.”
Last week at WATER’s Feminist Liberation Theologians’ Network meeting in San Diego at the American Academy of Religion, Susan offered a terrific political analysis and impassioned encouragement to step up our efforts. Her mystery novels are a creative example of how feminist liberation theology, ethics, and ritual can be useful.
Welcome back, Susan, and thanks for another page-turner that promotes justice.
Susan was kind to send us her notes which follow:
Trauma—shock, wound, injury that overwhelms our emotional capacity to digest it.
A traumatic experience can undermine a person’s sense of safety in the world—catastrophe can strike at any time.
See Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.
Trauma is contagious. My work as a domestic violence counselor meant I needed therapy myself.
Trauma can result in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), long term.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that’s caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event — either being part of it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Most people who go through traumatic events may have a hard time adjusting and coping for a short time. But with time and by taking good care of themselves, they usually get better. If the symptoms get worse, last for months or years, and affect their ability to function daily, they may have PTSD.
Fight, flight responses can have a third option: freeze—which is used in the novel.
I wanted to write a hopeful novel about recovery from PTSD and the dynamics of therapy to accomplish that.
The story is based on an actual series of sexual abuse of teen girls on swim teams and the cover up by swimming authorities.
Scholar Sharon Ringe observes: “Trauma is a pandemic.”
60-70% of people, the majority women, have at least one traumatic event in their past.
Current political context—an administration/cabinet of sex offenders, trying to trigger women and vulnerable people and cause them to flee or freeze.
Controlling women is key to maintaining political power.
Susan finished up reading Ch. 28, pp. 140ff which is one of several records of therapy sessions between Alice and her therapist.
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DISCUSSION:
This was a lively discussion, covering a lot of ground and opening some new themes for further consideration. A sample of the issues follows:
–The matter of university-based “free speech” is important to clarify. Susan’s story is based in the University of Chicago’s policy that allows certain kinds of speech, as in the novel threats against people,” in the name of freedom. Such speech does obvious harm in the case of violence against women.
–Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery is a major source on harm.
–One colleague recalled Susan teaching during her own doctoral studies with three small boys in tow. Women do everything all at once!
–Ethicist Mary Pellaur’s work on “moral callousness” was cited.
–A Nashville colleague mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis as central to one of Susan’s earlier books (Malice). Having spent her childhood in Cuba she could relate to the issues.
–A Canadian writer observed that Susan’s work is serious theology written in a popular, accessible style. The Canadian National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women is celebrated on December 6, when, in 1989, 14 young women were killed at a university in Montreal. Conclusion: Patriarchy is lethal.
–Discussion of the trigger warnings was helpful. There are many views, including that of a person who works against human trafficking. Often the response of people is “that happened to me.” Another person added that if clients are triggered it allows us to know they are seemingly ready to deal with an issue.
–Susan clarified that the goal of a patriarchal society is to shut women up. We can say, choose, be.
–One major takeaway was the insight that the current Trump cabinet picks seem designed to trigger those who have been abused. If the theory is correct, the fight, flight, or freeze responses are all problematic. The designers seem to be banking on the ‘freeze’ to keep resistance and opposition at a minimum.
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Conversation ensued after the official close, and longer than that in the WATER office, and we suspect in other venues as well.
WATER thanks Susan Thistlethwaite for being such a fine writer, a stalwart colleague, and a serious seeker of justice for all. We look forward to your next book, Susan!
