Emilie Townes
Emilie Maureen Townes is an African-American Christian social ethicist and theologian, currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. She was the first Black woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2013–2016.Education and career
Townes holds degrees from the University of Chicago and from the joint Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University program. She taught at Saint Paul School of Theology, Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Yale Divinity School, holding named chairs at both Union and Yale. In 2013 she became Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School. She has been an ordained American Baptist minister since 1980.Honors
Books
- Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil.
- Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Care and a Womanist Ethic of Care.
- In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness.
- Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope.
Co-edited books
- With Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela D. Simms: Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader
- With Stephanie Y. Mitchem: Religion, Health, and Healing in African American Life
