The fall installment of the Kathleen Mallory Distinguished Lecture Series will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10, in the Grand Hall of the Donald W. Reynolds Campus and Community Center at Southern Arkansas University. Quinton Dixie, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne will deliver a talk titled “The Difficulty of Finding Home: Toward an African American Spiritual Cartography.” The lecture will address the question “How does one remember what one never knew?”
In this provocative, part historical–part autobiographical presentation on religion and African American culture, professor Dixie will explore how memories and impressions of a rural South in which he never lived, impacted and shaped African American religious experiences in the urban North.
Dixie holds a bachelor of arts in urban policy from James Madison College at Michigan State University, a master of arts in religious studies, and a doctorate in church history from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. His research interests include the African American religious experience, religion and the civil rights movement, African American Baptist history, and hip-hop and spirituality.
A native Hoosier, Dr. Dixie spent six years (1997-2003) serving on the faculty of the religious studies department at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he taught a wide range of courses on religion in North America. In fall 2003, he returned home to Fort Wayne to develop a program in religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue Fort Wayne. He is the co-editor with Cornel West of “The Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption,” and the co-author with Juan Williams of “This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience.” Dixie is also and editor of the four-volume publication, “The Papers of Howard Thurman, 1899-1981,” due out in 2009. In addition, he has co-authored “Witness!: The Bicentennial History of Abyssinian Baptist Church in the City of New York, 1808-2008” (2009).
The lecture is free and open to the public. For further information, contact Dr. Linda Tucker, assistant professor of English at (870) 235-4210.
