2025 Workshop

Application Dates:

Opens: August 1, 2024
Deadline: October 1, 2024

Schedule of Sessions

All Virtual Sessions –  12:00-2:00 ET

In-Person: January 8-12, 2025: Atlanta, GA
Session 1: Friday, February 21, 2025
Session 2: Friday, March 21, 2025
Session 3:  Friday, April 18, 2025
Session 4:  Friday, June 20, 2025
Session 5:  Friday, September19, 2025
Session 6: Friday, October 17, 2025

Leadership Team

Shively T. J. Smith, PhD
Matthew Wesley Williams

Participants

Eric Williams, Duke University
Michele Watkins, St. John’s University
Velma Love, Interdenominational Theological Center
Ericka Dunbar, Baylor University
Renee Harrison, Howard University
Leonard Curry, Xavier University of Louisiana
Taurean Webb, DePaul University
Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois
Fatima Siwaju, University of Virginia
Kimberly Russaw, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Joi Orr, Interdenominational Theological Center
James Kwateng-Yeboah, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax
Joshua Bartholomew, Saint Paul School of Theology
Ashley Coleman Taylor, The University of Texas at Austin

Description

This hybrid workshop invites faculty of African descent from diverse religious specializations to participate in an intergenerational community of early, mid and later stage faculty. Centering our Africana identities, spiritualities, histories, and knowledges, this community seeks to co-create conditions for our renewed imagination, vocational alignment and agency. As a relational and creative community, this hybrid workshop will offer an experience in which we 

• re-member the joy, wonder, awe, and purposes of our teacher-scholar-artist vocations;
• explore the stories and re-craft the narratives that shape our personal and vocational trajectories;
• access play, humor, and fun as core resources for creativity, connection, and well-being; and
• co-create a relational container that facilitates support for healing and resilience

Goals

• To unearth and curate a repository of our indigenous knowledges and resources for our teaching styles, specializations, and tools.
• To define what thriving means and describe the necessary conditions for our thriving to occur, personally and collectively. 
• To interrogate the institutional reward systems that shape our agency, desires, and imaginations.
• To examine the dynamic, evolving relationship between our vocational formation and community-focused aspirations toward wholeness and liberation. 

Eligibility

• Any person who identifies as a person of African descent including all aspects of the African diaspora and the continent.
• Tenure track, continuing term, and/or full-time teaching contingency
• At least two years of full-time teaching experience
• Teaching in accredited seminary, college, or university in United States, Puerto Rico, or Canada
• Institutional support and personal commitment to participate fully in all workshop sessions

Application Materials

Please complete and attach the following documents to the online application (available August 1):

• Application Contact Information form 
• Cover letter:  
  • [300 word max] Introduce yourself and share what animates your vocation as a teacher-scholar-artist? In light of that, why are you applying to this 2025 African Diaspora Wabash workshop?
• Brief essay:  
  • [500 word max] What practices and rituals do you use to facilitate your healing and resilience? What are the sources of your practices? How might these practices contribute to your teaching?
• Academic CV (4-page limit) 
• A letter of institutional support for your full participation in this workshop from your Department Chair, Academic Dean, Provost, Vice President, or President. Please have this recommendation uploaded directly to your application according to the online application instructions.