Barbara Savage ’95 PhD, a history and Africana Studies scholar from the University of Pennsylvania, will give the annual Parks-King Lecture at Yale Divinity School on Tuesday, February 2. Savage will speak on “Re-Envisioning Religion in 21st Century Black Politics.”
Her virtual lecture will premiere on the Divinity School’s YouTube channel at 5:30 p.m. ET on the 2nd.
The Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought in the Department of Africana Studies at Penn, Savage is the author of two award-winning books: Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (2008) and Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948 (1999). Her co-edited works are: Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015) and Women and Religion in the African Diaspora (2004). She is concluding work on an intellectual biography of Professor Merze Tate, a prolific Black woman scholar of diplomatic history who served on the Howard University faculty from 1942 to 1977.
Savage received her doctorate in history from Yale in 1995 and holds a law degree from Georgetown University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia. Learn more about Professor Savage at her Penn faculty page.
In her Parks-King Lecture at YDS, Savage will explore how the first two decades of this century have brought significant shifts in the relationship between Black religion and Black political life. Touchstones include the Obama elections and presidency and the Moral Mondays and Black Lives Matter movements. The pandemic, she says, remade “the Black Church” once again into an “invisible institution” where the work of Black women and Black religious networks persisted in the 2020 elections and the Georgia Senate race.
Established in 1983 in honor of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Parks-King Lecture is dedicated to bringing the contributions of African American scholars, social theorists, pastors, and social activists to YDS and the wider New Haven community.
