Marla F. Frederick

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Marla Faye Frederick [1] [2] is an American ethnographer and scholar, with a focus on the African American religious experience. Her work addresses a range of topics including race, gender, religion and media studies. [3] She became the eighteenth Dean of Harvard Divinity School on January 1, 2024. [4]

Contents

Education

Frederick earned a BA in English from Spelman College and in 2000, earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University. [5] [6] She was a postdoctorate fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. [7]

Career and service

Frederick was an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. [5] She has been a visiting professor at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and at Northwestern University. [5] [8]

In the early 2000s and 2010s, Frederick was Assistant Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Harvard University. [9] [2] [8] In 2008, she was the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. [7]

Frederick became the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in 2019. [5] [10]

Frederick has served as the President of the Association of Black Anthropologists. [11] Frederick was the president of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2021. [12] [13]

On August 24, 2023, Harvard University announced that Frederick would become Dean of Harvard Divinity School on January 1, 2024. [14]

Research

Frederick's first book Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith (University of California Press, 2003), an ethnography of black church women in Halifax County, North Carolina, was praised by reviewers; the review in Contemporary Sociology described it as a work that "puts a human face on so many sociological concepts and categories." [15] [9]

In 2007, Frederick participated in a seven-author collaborative project in which scholars embedded themselves in North Carolina communities and observed how American democracy functioned in an "ordinary" community beyond just the act of voting. [2] The resulting book was Local Democracy Under Siege Activism, Public Interests, and Private Politics, which won the 2008 Society for the Anthropology of North America (SANA) Book Prize. [16] [17]

Her first book on the relationship between television and religion was Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global (Stanford University Press, 2015). [18] [8] In 2016, Frederick co-authored Televised Redemption: Black Religious Media and Racial Empowerment with Carolyn Moxey Rouse and John L. Jackson Jr. [19]

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References

  1. ↑ "Past Winners CRG". American Academy of Religion. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  2. 1 2 3 "Local Democracy Under Siege". NYU Press. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  3. ↑ Writer, Abby Ann Ramsey, Staff (11 February 2022). "Prof. Marla Frederick tells 'the story of Black life' through HCBUs in religious studies lecture". The Daily Beacon. Retrieved 2022-11-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ "Marla F. Frederick". Harvard Divinity School. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Hanna, Laurel (February 26, 2019). "Marla Frederick to Join Candler Faculty". Candler School of Theology.
  6. ↑ "Marla Frederick, 2000". Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  7. 1 2 "Marla Frederick". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 2012-03-16. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  8. 1 2 3 Frederick, Marla (16 December 2015). Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global, Marla F. Frederick. Stanford University Press. ISBN   9780804790949 . Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  9. 1 2 Frederick, Marla (November 2003). Between Sundays. University of California Press. ISBN   9780520233942.
  10. ↑ "Marla F. Frederick". Candler School of Theology. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  11. ↑ "Marla Frederick". Where Religion Lives. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  12. ↑ "Executive Committee". American Academy of Religion. Retrieved 2020-08-15.
  13. ↑ "AAR Presidents". aarweb.org. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
  14. ↑ "Marla Frederick Named Next Dean of the Harvard Divinity School". Harvard Divinity School. 24 August 2023. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  15. ↑ Frederick, Marla Faye (November 2003). Between Sundays: Black women and everyday struggles of faith. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN   978-0-520-93645-4. OCLC   55749295.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  16. ↑ Holland, Dorothy (2007). Local democracy under siege: activism, public interests, and private politics. New York: New York University Press. ISBN   978-0-8147-9088-5. OCLC   191952660.
  17. ↑ "SANA Book Prize". North American Dialogue. 11 (2): 27–28. 2008. doi:10.1111/j.1556-4819.2008.00013.x. ISSN   1556-4819.
  18. ↑ Frederick, Marla Faye (16 December 2015). Colored television: American religion gone global. Stanford, California. ISBN   978-0-8047-9700-9. OCLC   927405286.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  19. ↑ Rouse, Carolyn Moxley; Jackson Jr., John L. J; Frederick, Martha F. (November 2016). Televised redemption : Black religious media and racial empowerment. New York: NYU Press. ISBN   978-1-4798-7691-4. OCLC   960701703.
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