Power and Alterity in Black Religious Thought
Who is the human? What is legitimate religion? Who is left out of these discourses? Questions of power, humanity, and alterity animate religious discourse and responses to oppression. Leveraging the Rastafari movement and interrogating religious racism this talk will allow us to grapple with 20th century Black religious discourses and their continued relevance for thinking about how to protect religious freedom in the contemporary moment.
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Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California – Los Angeles. Alhassan comes to UCLA from Arizona State University where she was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. As a transdisciplinary Africana Studies scholar of religion, philosophy, and gender theory, Alhassan transnational ethnographic work focuses on Black women’s radical epistemologies in Africa and the Caribbean. She is interested in the healing communities Rastafari women form to combat anti-black gendered racism and religious discrimination. Her forthcoming book tentatively titled, Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women’s Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World is the winner of the National Women’s Association and University of Illinois Press First Book Prize. She is the co-editor of the book, Black Women and Da Rona: Community, Consciousness, and Ethics of Care, published with the Feminist Wire Series Books at the University of Arizona Press in 2023. Her published work also appears in Callaloo, the National Political Science Review, Religions, The Black Scholar, IDEAZ journal, Political Theology Network, the Immanent Frame, and Caliban’s Readings. She is a Crossroads Arts Fellow with The Crossroads Project Black Religious, Histories, Communities and Cultures at Princeton University. Currently, she serves as the Secretary of Rastafari Thought at the Caribbean Philosophical Association, on the board of the Religion, Medicines, and Healing Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and an organizer of the Collaborative for Research on Black Women and Girls.