Photos from the Fourth Session

The final session of the day was chaired by Prof. Catherine Roach, of New College (also holding an affiliated appointed to Women's Studies). Trained in the study of religion, her work combines feminist theory and culture studies, and examines a broad range of topics: from her first book on environmental ethics to her latest book, Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture.

The focus of the fourth session was Prof. Maha Marouan's paper, entitled "The Stillness That Comes After: African Traditional Religions, Christianity and the Meaning of Death in David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident" (PDF; available with Bama ID and Password). Dr. Marouan, who studies African diaspora identities and religion in literature, joined the Department of Religious Studies in the Fall of 2005, after having first visited the campus as an invited participant in its The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion conference (kindly co-sponsored by the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences).

Prof. John Giggie (History)--who is himself a specialist on southern U.S. history, focuses also on African American religion and history--responded. He is the co-editor of Faith in the Market and his book, which has just appeared, is entitled After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915. His essay on religion in the civil rights movement can be found here.

The second response was from Prof. Margaret Abruzzo, also of the Department of History. Dr. Abruzzo joined the faculty in the Fall of 2006 and works on American history. Her current project involves a revision to her Notre Dame doctoral dissertation, entitled Polemical Pain: Slavery, Suffering, and Sympathy in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Moral Debate."

After the conclusion of the fourth session a number of participants attended a wine and cheese hosted at the home of Profs. Roach and Trost.