Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D.

Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D. became Director of the Wabash Center in January of 2020. As a womanist scholar of Religious Education and artist, her work focuses upon issues of pedagogy, epistemologies of hope, and justice. She incorporates into her writing and teaching the cultural and spiritual values taught to her by her southern, Christian parents and grandparents. Nancy’s first book was a children’s book entitled All Quite Beautiful: Living in a Multicultural Society. Her book entitled Dear Sisters: A Womanist Practice of Hospitality was written for a scholarly as well as church audience. Her books written in collaboration include: Being Black/Teaching Black: Politics and Pedagogy in Religious Studies and Black Church Studies: An Introduction.

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The intent of racism is to dehumanize. Consequently, a prevalent strategy of racism is to convince caring people that non-white people are lacking - lacking in values, lacking in character, lacking in abilities, lacking in that which makes for good community, good neighbors, good teachers. Racism teaches that non-white people ...

Teaching for racial equality, and against oppression, has meant coming to grips with what my adult students (domestic and international) do not know, i.e. the basic concepts of race and the mechanisms of racism in the United States. Teaching about racial violence, domination and hatred invariably means asking students ...

We teach with aspirational dreams for our students. The right-now challenge of student formation is that we have never seen our world just-so. We are intellectual, faith pioneers in the malaise and luxury of the 21st century. This digital age has fashioned for us a threshold into terrain that is ...

Sometimes learning is accompanied by tears, theirs and mine.  The concept of mis-education is so disquieting to some students that tears are shed in the classroom.  Never has there been bold sobs or muffled cries of languished sorrow – nothing quite so dramatic.  Rather, the tears have been quiet moments of ...

God is unknowable.  So, the things of God cannot be learned – they must be revealed. What does it mean to teach our students to wait for the revelation, to be aware of the revelation, to find joy in the revelation, to trust in the revelation?  In what ways might students ...

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