Candler’s Black Church Studies Program will welcome Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein, assistant professor in Black religious traditions and constructive theology and ethics at Brite Divinity School, as the distinguished guest speaker for the 2025 Anna Julia Cooper Lecture.
Oredein will present her lecture, “Can African Women Be Womanists?”, on Tuesday, April 1 from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Room 252 of the Rita Anne Rollins Building. A virtual option is also available. The event is free and open to the public, with registration required.
Register to attend the 2025 Anna Julia Cooper Lecture.
This annual lecture honors Anna Julia Cooper, one of the most influential Black scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper graduated from both Oberlin College and the Sorbonne, becoming the fourth African American woman in the United States to earn a PhD. She dedicated over 30 years to serving as a public-school teacher and principal in Washington, D.C., and remained a prominent educator, activist, and author throughout her life, passing away at the age of 105.
Lecture: “Can African Women Be Womanists?”
Alice Walker’s definition of womanist anchors itself in Black feminist identity, but what if women experience the modifier “Black” in distinct ways? Centering African feminist and African women’s theological voices in conversation with womanist religious thinkers, this lecture insists that the modifier “Black” is a theological inflection point cognizant of contextual truths and diasporic nuances.
Oredein’s scholarship engages Black religious traditions, theopoetics from a Black diasporic perspective, constructive theology, postcolonial thought, and liminal identity and faith. She is the author of The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), which explores the pioneering work of Oduyoye in shaping African women’s theology. She is also co-editor of Theopoetics in Color: Embodied Approaches to Theological Discourse (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), the first theopoetic anthology centering racial and ethnic minoritized scholars. Her forthcoming book, The Care Book: A Theological Ethic of Care (Eerdmans), examines an ethic of care from a minoritized theo-ethical perspective.
This year’s Anna Julia Cooper Lecture is presented in collaboration with Candler’s World Christianity and Women, Theology, and Ministry programs.