Womanist Thought in Religion and Psychology

3 credits · Divinity School

In 1979 Alice Walker first coined the term "womanist" in a short story, "Coming Apart". Walker's main character thinks to herself that she has "never considered herself a feminist--though she is, of course, a 'womanist.' A 'womanist' is a feminist, only more common." It was not, however, until her 1981 collection of prose "In Search of our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose" that the term womanist began to fuel the aims, methodologies, aesthetics, and sources for research concerned with the study, and transformation, of black women's lives. Womanist scholars situate black women's experience as the epistemological starting place for reflection, theory building and praxis; therefore, a primary presupposition of this course is that black women's particularity, and the challenges their experiences pose for existing perspectives, is integral to womanist approaches to psychology and religion and is the privileged source of knowledge building in this class. This seminar course will introduce students to, and deepen their engagement with, womanists' thought, and the methods, aims, approaches, and sources of womanist scholarship in religion and psychology. [3] Ms. Sheppard