Speakers
Daina Berry
Keynote Title
‘A Spirit too Bold and Daring for a Slave:’ Lineage, Legacy, and Legitimizing History
Bio
Dr. Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Berry is an historian, a “scholar of the enslaved,” and a specialist on gender and slavery as well as Black women’s history in the United States. She is the award-winning author/editor of six books. Her most recent publication, A Black Women’s History of the United States, co-authored with Kali Nicole Gross, is an empowering testament of Black women’s ability to build communities in the face of oppression, and their continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Professor Berry completed her BA, MA, and PhD in African American Studies and U.S. History at the University of California Los Angeles.
Jacob Kehinde Olupona
Keynote Title
The Afterlife of slavery in Africa: Unforeseen religious and sociocultural consequences.
Bio
Jacob Kehinde Olupona is Professor of African and African American Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University. He has authored and edited several books, including City of 201 Gods: Ile Ife In Time, Space and The Imagination (University of California Press, 201) which won the Harvard University Cabot Fellowship, 2012-2013. He has won several grants and fellowships and is the recipient of four Honorary doctorates including from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. In 2008, he was conferred with the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) by President Shehu Yar’Adua for his scholarship in the humanities. He also received the American Academy of Religion prestigious Award in the Public Understanding of Religion in 2018 and was was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.
Yolanda Pierce
Keynote Title
Laying on of Hands: Slavery’s Sins & Divine Healing
Bio
Yolanda Pierce is Dean and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair & Professor of Religion and Literature at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. Her scholarly research specialties include African American religious history, womanist theology, and race and religion. She holds degrees from Cornell University and Princeton University. An accomplished administrator in higher education, Pierce also served as the Founding Director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). A widely published author, she has written several books, essays, and articles for academic and trade journals. In addition to her teaching and academic scholarship, Pierce is a native New Yorker, public theologian, community activist, and ordained minister.
