Black Women, Black Love: Interview with Dr. Dianne Stewart
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Finally, a female voice on how black love has come to the state that it is currently in by looking back to see how we got here. Join me for this in-depth discussion regarding Dr. Dianne Stewart's book, Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage. We go beyond just being enslaved; we cover her (and others') research from true stories via The Slave Narratives and other's biographies, and even the U.S. pension files, on how America has methodically done everything possible to keep black love as far apart and as shallow as possible from slavery up through today.
Dr. Stewart's Bio: Dianne Marie Stewart is a professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University, specializing in African-heritage religious cultures in the Caribbean and the Americas. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in Hartford, CT, USA. She obtained her B.A. degree from Colgate University in English and African American Studies, her Masters of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. degree in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she studied with well-known scholars such as Delores Williams, James Washington, and her advisor James Cone. Dr. Stewart joined Emory's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and teaches courses in the graduate and undergraduate programs.
Dr. Stewart's research has been supported by the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Abraham J. and Phyllis Katz Foundation, and other prestigious fellowships and institutions. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and chapters, as well as three monographs — Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (Oxford University Press, 2005), Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage (Seal Press, 2020) and Obeah, Orisa and Religious Identity in Trinidad: Africana Nations and the Power of Black Sacred Imagination – Orisa, Volume II (Duke University Press, October 2022). She is also a founding co-editor, with Drs. Jacob Olupona and Terrence Johnson, of the Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People series at Duke University Press.
Over her career at Emory, Dr. Stewart has won several awards, including the Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Emory College of Arts and Sciences' Distinguished Advising Award, and the Emory University Laney Graduate School's Eleanor Main Graduate Faculty Mentor Award. However, Dr. Stewart is most proud of her leadership of Emory's Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, an international initiative that aims to diversify the academy by helping students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups to earn the Ph.D. degree and secure faculty positions at tertiary institutions across the United States and South Africa.