Mitzi J. Smith

The Trauma of Sexual and Domestic Violence

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“A raw and lucidly vulnerable memoir of Ellis Davis’s journey of healing from the trauma of multiple experiences of sexual violence. She bravely draws back the curtains of silence, inviting us to look closely at the all-too-familiar world of sexual abuse. . . . A compelling read for victims, victim advocates, and pastoral-care practitioners seeking or needing an autobiographical account of healing in the journey toward freedom and wholeness. Ellis Davis bares her soul.”

The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Dr. Shanell Smith offers a fascinating, sophisticated, and complex imaginative reader-engaged interpretation of the multilayered characterization of the woman/city Babylon as whore. She reads Revelation in a state of ambivalence and with ‘ambi-veil-ence.’ Dr. Smith both builds upon and reads differently from other Revelation scholars including African American interpreters, interrupting the conversation with her postcolonial womanist perspective. As an African American female scholar who embodies the tension of hybridity, Dr. Smith’s entrance into the tension of the ‘masculinist minority report’ about the woman/city Babylon demonstrates that reading Revelation can be a complex and liberating experience for black women.”