Danna Nolan Fewell joined the Drew University faculty in the fall of 2000 as Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Theological School and in the Graduate Division of Religion. In 2014 she was named the John Fletcher Hurst Professor of Hebrew Bible. Prior to coming to Drew she had taught for thirteen years at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. She holds an M.T.S. and a Ph.D. from Emory University. Danna retired in 2023.
Her teaching and research interests include literary and cultural approaches to biblical narrative, feminist criticism, the Bible in art and politics, children and biblical literature, ecological hermeneutics, and the ethics of reading. During her career she has been a three-time recipient of the Scholarly Outreach Award sponsored by the Lilly endowment, as well as a three-time recipient of the Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award sponsored by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church (in 1999 by Southern Methodist University; in 2004 and 2010 by Drew University). In 2015 she was also honored by the students of Drew’s Graduate Division of Religion with the Karen McCarthy Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching.
In addition to numerous scholarly articles, her published works include Compromising Redemption: Relating Characters in the Book of Ruth (nominated for the Jewish Book Award in 1990), Circle of Sovereignty: Plotting Politics in the Book of Daniel (1991), Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (1993), Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (1993), The Children of Israel: Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our Children (2003), and Icon of Loss: The Haunting Child of Samuel Bak (2009). She is the editor of Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible (1992) and the co-editor of Bible and Ethics of Reading (1997) and Representing the Irreparable: The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak (2008). Her most recent publication is The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative (2016) a volume of fifty-one essays by some of the world’s most noted and most recent authorities on various aspects of biblical narrative.
In addition to teaching and writing, Danna has been a general editor of three major book series: Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation (Westminster/John Knox), Biblical Limits (Routledge Press), and Semeia Studies (published by the Society of Biblical Literature). She also served as program chair for the Reading, Theory, and the Bible and the Children in the Biblical World sections of the Society of Biblical Literature and as president of the MidAtlantic Regional SBL.
Danna and her partner David live on a 25 acre farm in Franklin, North Carolina where they grow most of their own food, keep bees and chickens, entertain friends, teach classes, and enjoy a lovely mountain view.
