Activism

Guzman Presenting

Video: Chimera Geographies: Black Spiritual Borderland Performances of the Caribbean

January 1, 2024

In this project, Elena Guzman explored the way Black women and non-binary people through the Caribbean and its diaspora use spiritual and ritual performance within African Diasporic Religions, including Santeria, Haitian Vodou, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, 21 Divisions, and Obeah, as a means to forge interstitial geographies of the African diaspora. Elena Guzman is an Afro-Boricua filmmaker, educator, and scholar raised in the Bronx with deep roots in the LES. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Cornell University and is an Assistant Professor in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her manuscript, "Chimera Geographies: Black Feminist Borderland Performances," focuses on the way Black women and non-binary people throughout the African diaspora use ritual performance in African diaspora religion as a means to forge Black feminist borderlands through spiritual crossings. Her work has been published in Feminist Anthropology, NACLA, and Cultural Anthropology’s Screening Room.

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Pamela Ayo Yetunde

Video: Call, Respond, and Serve: The Role of Spirituality in Public Theology and Politics

November 15, 2023

Major religious traditions call on their adherents to respond to the causes of suffering, those who suffer, and the prevention of suffering. The ways we respond and serve can take many forms including activism and holding political office. How does spiritual practice support the difficult work of speaking truth to power as well as being in positions of power without losing focus on the relief of suffering?... Read more about Video: Call, Respond, and Serve: The Role of Spirituality in Public Theology and Politics

Black Religion and Critical Theory Colloquium: Panel II Speaker

Video: Black Religion and Critical Theory Colloquium: Panel II

October 21, 2023

Convened by Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, this colloquium bridged connections between the critical study of Black religion and studies of race, gender, and sexuality in critical theory and philosophy, among many other fields. The aim of this gathering was to support research and sustained dialogue about the ways in which religion and race are co-constitutive and function as governing categories of analysis at the helm of both religious studies and Black studies, respectively. This panel discussion featured Joy James (Williams College), Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary), and Paul Anthony Daniels (Fordham University).

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Black Religion and Critical Theory Colloquium: Panel I Presenter

Video: Black Religion and Critical Theory Colloquium: Panel I

October 21, 2023

Convened by Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies at HDS, this colloquium bridged connections between the critical study of Black religion and studies of race, gender, and sexuality in critical theory and philosophy, among many other fields. The aim of this gathering was to support research and sustained dialogue about the ways in which religion and race are co-constitutive and function as governing categories of analysis at the helm of both religious studies and Black studies, respectively. This panel discussion featured J. Kameron Carter (Indiana University—Bloomington), Cecilio M. Cooper (Folger Shakespeare Library), and Joseph Winters (Duke University).

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New York Times logo

What Can Literature Teach Us About Forgiveness?

August 24, 2023

In his recent book Forgiveness: An Alternate Account, HDS Professor Matthew Ichihashi Potts quotes his colleague the theologian Mark Jordan on the Gospels: “They are contradictory stories studded with paradoxical aphorisms. Every theology that is not written as a life told four ways already departs from the most authoritative model of Christian writing." In other words, this multitude of vantage points, even contradictions, are not obstacles to be overcome in order to arrive at a single, distilled truth: There is wisdom in the accumulation and juxtaposition of biblical narratives.

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