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Emilie Townes to Discuss 'Justice Notes' in Nov. 18 DPU Mendenhall Lecture
The Rev. Dr. Emilie M. Townes, a distinguished scholar and leader in theological education and dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School, will present DePauw University's Mendenhall Lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 18.
Townes, who is also the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt, will discuss "Justice Notes" at 7:30 p.m. in Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. The program is open to all and is presented free of admission charge.
Townes' broad areas of expertise include Christian ethics, cultural theory and studies, postmodernism and social postmodernism. She has been a pioneering scholar in womanist theology, a field of studies in which the historic and current insights of African American women are brought into critical engagement with the traditions of Christian theology. Townes has a strong interest in thinking critically about womanist perspectives on issues such as health care, economic justice, poetry and literary theory.
She is the author of the groundbreaking book "Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil," as well as "Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Care," "In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness" and "Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope."
The ordained American Baptist clergywoman earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Joint Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University Program in Religious and Theological Studies in 1989. She also received a doctorate in ministry from the University of Chicago in 1982. Previously, Townes earned her master's and bachelor's degrees at the University of Chicago. She continues her research on women and health in the African diaspora in Brazil and the United States.
Townes currently serves as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion (2012--2016). She was the first African American woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion, which she led in 2008. Townes was inducted as a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
In 2010, Professor Townes was honored as Distinguished Religious Scholar by the Black Religious Scholars Group.
DePauw's Mendenhall Lectures, which were inaugurated in 1913, were endowed by theReverend Doctor Marmaduke H. Mendenhall. His desire was to enable the University to bring to campus "persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship" to address issues related to the academic dialogue concerning Christianity. Although Mendenhall was a pastor in the North Indiana Annual Conference of what was then called the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the parents of the United Methodist Church, he explicity dictated that lectures be selected without regard to denominational divisions. The endowment has allowed DePauw to bring theological and religious scholars of international repute to campus for a century.