Talk to Explore Women, Religion and Media

Marla F. Frederick, Harvard professor of African and African-American studies and of religion, investigates “Women, Religion and Media” in a free, public lecture Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 3:30 p.m. in Kerrwood Hall’s Hieronymus Lounge. The Westmont Gender Studies Program and Global Christianity Series co-sponsor the talk.

Frederick’s lecture will address concerns related to the rise of prosperity ministries in poor communities as well as the dramatic rise of African American religious broadcasters on television. Her most recent book, “Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith,” is an ethnographic study of the faith commitments of women in rural North Carolina.

“Marla Frederick works in fascinating ways at the intersection of ethnic identity, gender identity and religious identity,” says Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, Westmont professor of English. “She brings to campus experience in field studies with African-American women in Christian communities in the rural South and in contemporary religious media.

“Dr. Frederick’s lecture will offer both students and the larger community a model of bringing faith to bear on scholarship that’s both richly rigorous and deeply engaged in questions people are asking outside the academy and outside the church.”

Frederick also co-authored “Local Democracy Under Siege: Activism, Public Interests and Private Politics,” which won the 2008 Best Book Award from the Society for the Anthropology of North America. She graduated from Spelman College and earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Duke University.