Healing Racism's Hurts: Memory and Mourning

Princeton Professor Albert Raboteau will speak on “Healing the Wounds of Racism: The Role of Memory and Mourning” 4 p.m. Oct. 2 in Hieronymus Lounge in Kerrwood Hall on the upper Westmont campus.

The lecture, sponsored by the Erasmus Society, is free and open to the public.

Raboteau, the Henry W. Putnam professor of religion at Princeton, will discuss the ongoing effects of racism upon the nation and will suggest that Americans are still struggling to come to terms with the history of slavery and the racial hatred sowed by slavery.

He will explore how remembering and mourning both those who suffered and those who inflicted the wounds of racism might contribute toward national healing.

This is the second public lecture Raboteau will give in Santa Barbara. He is speaking 5 p.m. Oct. 1 at UCSB’s Hatlen Theatre on “Day, King, Merton and Thurman: Suffering and Social Justice.”

Over the past generation, Raboteau has distinguished himself as the leading historian of African-American religion. His books include “Slave Religion: ‘The Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South,” winner of the National Religious Book Award, “A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History,” and “Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans.” Most recently, he published “A Sorrowful Journey,” a moving account of his own spiritual pilgrimage.

Raboteau received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His teaching career began at Xavier University, and continued at Yale and Berkeley. He has taught at Princeton since 1982 and in recent years has also served as dean of the Graduate School.

For more information, contact the public affairs office at (805) 565-6051 or e-mail pubaffairs@westmont.edu.