Download the Conference Poster [pdf]	Challenging boundaries and expanding discourse, this “third wave” conference offers an opportunity to diversely engage the rugged terrains of our contemporary condition by drawing on the strengths of womanist religious scholarship while also departing from the inherited tradition. Together a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-religious group of scholars and attendees will think together on how to articulate and live into this third wave that cares for the varied lived religious experiences of women of African descent and craves justice, wellness, wholeness, freedom and quality of life. “Third Wave” womanist religious thought inherits and lifts up the legacy of its strong womanist heritage and remains faithfully unfaithful to its discursive history. Like all womanist religious thought, this third wave is grounded in black women’s religiosity. This third wave celebrates hybridity, tension and complexity; it is Christian and non-Christian, straight and queer, historical and yet postmodern, political and rich with philosophical and cultural criticism, and lastly, committed to an open-ended vision of possibility.
Press Release Access conference press release [pdf]
	* This conference is also part of the 20th anniversary of the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Claremont Graduate University.

MONICA A. COLEMAN
Associate Professor of Constructive Theology
and African American Religions; Associate Professor of Religion (CGU)

Sabbatical Leave: 2009-2010 (Career Enhancement Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellowship and ATS/ Lily Research Grant)
Personal Web Site

Roundtable Discussion: Must I Be Womanist?
JFSR 22.1 (2006) 85-134

Monica A. Coleman is a philosophical theologian who works with a process metaphysic and the black and womanist theological traditions. Her research interests include process theology, new movements in black and womanist theologies, African traditional religions (Yoruba-based traditions in the Americas), mental health and theology and religious pluralism. Dr. Coleman teaches courses on Systematic Theology, Constructive Theology, African American Religions, Metaphor in/ and Theology, Black and Womanist Theologies, Whitehead's Religious Relevance, and Sexual Violence & Faith Communities. Coleman is a co-Director of the Center for Process Studies, and co-chair of the Black Theology Group and a member of the steering committee of the Open and Relational Theologies Consultation for the American Academy of Religion. She also serves on the board of Civic Frame, a non-profit that uses art and intellectual work to encourage civic engagement about pressing social issues. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, she is an active ecumenist, having served as a staff minister in AME churches, interdenominational churches, and on the USA Faith and Order Commission at the National Council of Churches.

EDUCATION

Cert., Religion, Gender and Sexuality, Vanderbilt University Divinity School A.B., Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges M.Div., Vanderbilt University Divinity School M.A., Claremont Graduate University Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University

Established Scholars

• Sharon D. Welch
• Barbara A. Holmes
• Debra Majeed
• Ronald Neal
• Arisika Razak
• Roger Sneed
• Victor Anderson
• Darnise C. Martin
• Stephen C. Finley

Sharon D. Welch, Professor and Provost, Meadville Lombard Theological School
“Aesthetic Pragmatism and a Third Wave of Radical Politics”

Victor Anderson, Professor, Vanderbilt University Divinity School
“The Religious Critic and the Scholarly Aesthetic: Experience in Manifestation and Power“

Barbara A. Holmes, Vice President of Academic Affairs/Dean/ Professor, Memphis Theological Seminary
“The Signs of the Times: A Post-Obama Third Wave Womanist Cultural Critique”

Debra Majeed, Associate Professor, Beloit College
“Muslim Marriage: A Womanist Perspective”

Darnise C. Martin, Visiting Assistant Professor, Loyola Marymount University
"Is this a Dance Floor or a Revival Meeting? Theological Questions and Challenges from the Underground House Music Movement"

Arisika Razak
Program Chair, PhD in Philosophy and Religion, Concentration in Women's Spirituality,
California Institute of Integral Studies
“Embodying Womanism or Notes towards a Holistic and Liberating Pedagogy”

Stephen C. Finley, Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University
"From Mistress to Mother: The Religious Life and Transformation of Tynetta Muhammad in the Nation of Islam"

Ronald Neal, Assistant Professor, Claflin University
"It's Deeper Than Rap: Hip Hop, Masculinity, and Religion"

Roger Sneed, Assistant Professor, Furman University
"On Liminality and Black Queer Existence"

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Emerging Scholars

Elonda Clay, Ph.D. Student, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
“Confessions....'"

Monica R. Miller, Ph.D. Candidate, Chicago Theological Seminary
Pre-Doctoral Fellow at University of Pennsylvania
“Slippery When Wet: (Re)Signifying “Deviance” in the Haraam of Religious Respectability"

Xiumei Pu, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Minnesota
“Nature, Sexuality, and Spirituality: a Womanist Reading of Di Mu (Earth Mother) and Di Mu Jing (Songs of Earth Mother) in China”

Nessette Falu, Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies, Rice University
“Black Religious Identities of Invisible Hands: Epistemologies of Desire and Religion as the 'Crystallization of Culture'”

Eddie Kornegay, Jr., Ph.D. Candidate, Chicago Theological Seminary
“Beyond Heterosexuality(?): Towards a Prolegomenon of Re-presenting Black Masculinity at the Beginning of the Post-Civil Rights(?)Post-Liberation(?) Era”

Moderators

Susan L. Nelson, Academic Dean, Claremont School of Theology

Karen Jo Torjesen, Margo L. Goldsmith Professor of Women’s Studies, Claremont Graduate University

Layli Philips Maparyan, Associate Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s Studies, Georgia State University

Derek S. Hicks, Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Tammi J. Schneider, Professor of Religion, Claremont Graduate University

Jon Gill, Ph.D. student Claremont Graduate University

Sponsors