Rachel E. Harding

BA, Religious Studies, Brown University
MFA, English/Creative Writing, Brown University
PhD, History, University of Colorado Boulder

Rachel Elizabeth Harding, is a native of Georgia, a writer, historian and poet. Rachel is a specialist in religions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora and studies the relationship between religion, creativity and s­ocial justice activism in cross-cultural perspective. A Cave Canem Fellow, she holds an MFA in creative writing from Brown University and a PhD in history from the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Harding is author of A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Indiana University Press, 2000) as well as numerous poems and essays. Rachel’s second book, Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism and Mothering (Duke University Press, 2015), combines her own writings with those of her mother, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, on the role of compassion and spirituality in African American social justice organizing.

Dr. Harding is chairperson of the coordinating committee for the African Diaspora Religions Group of the American Academy of Religion and is a member of the editorial boards of Saberes em Perspectiva (Brazil) and the Journal of Africana Religions. She regularly organizes study-tours to Brazil with an emphasis on Afro-Brazilian history, culture and ritual practice. 

Rachel Harding is Associate Professor of Indigenous Spiritual Traditions in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Denver. 

"O acolhimento, a cura e os vultos: reflexões sobre a religião e a militancia negra-norte americana do sul dos estados unidos," in Revista Pontos da Interragoção, vol 5, no 2, 2016

Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism and Mothering, with Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Durham: Duke University Press, 2015

"The Lithic Imagination and the Tertia: The Longian Paradigm and Art in the Study of Afro-Atlantic Religion," in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, vol 16, nos 1-2, 2014

"Authority, History and Everyday Mysticism in the Poetry of Lucille Clifton: A Womanist View," in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, vol 12, no 1, 2014

"Water Trouble: The Road, The Boat and the Third Thing: Reflections on Daniel Minter’s Exhibit at Soren Christensen Gallery, New Orleans, May 2014." Statement commissioned by artist for his website. http://www.danielminter.com/Welcome.html

"On Poetry and Mothering: Thoughts on African American Women’s Mysticism," ecclesio.com, February 2013. http://www.ecclesio.com/2013/02/on-poetry-and-mothering-thoughts-on-african-american-women%E2%80%99s-mysticism-rachel-harding/

"Entrevista com Poeta-Militante Sonia Sanchez" in Saberes em Perspectiva: Gênero e diversidade cultural, vol 2, no 2, jan/abr 2012

"There Was a Tree in Starksville" with Rosemarie Freeney Harding, in Sojourners: Faith in Action for Social Justice, February, 2012

"Atlanta’s Mennonite House" with Rosemarie Freeney Harding, in Widening the Circle: Anabaptist Experiments in Discipleship, editor Joanna Shenk, Herald Press, 2011

"Remnants: Mothering, Spirituality and African American Activism" in Faith, Feminism and Scholarship: The Next Generation, eds Kate Ott and Melanie Harris, Palgrave/McMillan, 2011

"You Got a Right to the Tree of Life: African American Spirituals and Religions of the Diaspora," in CrossCurrents, Vol 57, no 2, Summer 2007

"É a Senzala: Slavery, Women and Embodied Knowledge in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé," in Women and Religion in the African Diaspora, eds. Barbara Savage and R. Marie Griffith, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006

"Hospitality, Haints and Healing: A Southern African American Meaning of Religion," with Rosemarie Freeney Harding, in Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, New York: NYU Press, 2006

"Singing to Freedom," interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon, conducted with Vincent Harding, in Sojourners, August, 2004: 32-35

"Afro-Brazilian Religions," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsey Jones, Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2004

"Radical Hospitality: How Kitchen Table Lessons in Welcome and Respect Helped Sustain the Black Freedom Movement," with Rosemarie Freeney Harding in Sojourners Magazine, July/August 2003

 "'What Part of the River You’re In': African American Women in Devotion to Oshun" in Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, eds. Joseph Murphy and Mei Mei Sanford, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001

A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000

"Biography, Democracy and Spirit: An Interview with Vincent G. Harding" in Callaloo, vol 20, no 3, 1998

ETST 3110   Indigenous Studies: Healing and Religion
ETST 2155   African American History
ETST 3794   Ethnicity and Race in American Popular Culture
ETST/RLST 3300  Shamanic Traditions