This session will be a discussion among presenters reflecting upon the insights shared throughout the series. In addition to identifying themes and throughlines among sessions, we will return to the overarching questions that framed this collaboration: What does the academic study of religion teach us about the complex histories and legacies of slavery? How can a deeper understanding of the roles of religion enhance our commitment to reparative action in our contemporary times?
On March 6, Tracey Hucks, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies and Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will interview Dain Perry, a direct descendant of the DeWolfs of New England, the largest single slave-trading family in the United States, and his wife, Constance Perry, to discuss the reparative and healing work that they engage in as they tour and present throughout the United States.
On February 27, Terrence L. Johnson, Professor of African American Religious Studies, will examine how the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison establish a framework for exploring the role of religion and ethics in grappling with the memory and history of African enslavement.
This conversation is the first of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery | A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speakers are David F. Holland, John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at HDS, and Kathryn Gin Lum, Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Stanford University.
It has long been a historical truism that, in the early modern West, pseudoscientific racial hierarchies replaced religious hierarchies as the...
Building beyond the work of the 2022 Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Report, Harvard Divinity School will host a series of online conversations with members of the HDS faculty to engage these vital questions from their expertise within the study of religion. Expand your understanding of the history and continuing implications of slavery in service of advancing racial justice in our own time and context.
On February 27, Terrence L. Johnson, Professor of African American Religious Studies, will examine how the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison establish a framework...
Arnold Arboretum (Hunnewell Building), 125 Arborway, Boston
Dr. Liseli A. Fitzpatrick, a Trinidadian-scholar in the field of African Diasporic cosmologies and sacred ontologies, will lead an engaging lecture and discussion exploring African mythologies and folkloric cultures.
Initiation – In Love Solidarity is a choreographic narrative exploring the embodiment of the Middle Passage, and the resilience and evolving identities of women in the African diaspora. A film component of the work was created at historic sites in New England related to the transatlantic slave trade and emancipation. The imagery of the cowrie shell is present throughout, chosen as an emblem of the transformative identity of the Black female body.