Renee K. Harrison is a tenured Associate Professor of African American and US Religious History at Howard University. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University (Atlanta, GA) with an interdisciplinary concentration in History, Philosophy, African American Studies, and Black Feminist/Womanist Thought.
Her research interests include an interdisciplinary and interfaith approach to African American religious history and culture; Black feminist/womanist thought; aesthetic theory and the arts; phenomenology; and rituals of healing and resistance.
Her recent publication, Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America (Fortress Press, November 2021), documents and appraises the role enslaved women, men, and children played in building the US and its physical and fiscal infrastructure especially key governmental landmarks in Washington, DC. Given the enslaved community’s contribution to the US, Black Hands questions the absence of memorials (e.g., stand-alone monuments) on the National Mall that honor enslaved Black Laborers. Dr. Harrison calls for a particular kind of Enslaved Labor Memorial to redress the nation’s historic role in slavery and human harm and acknowledge the karmic debt owed to these first-Black-bodied builders of America.
Dr. Harrison is also the author of Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum American (2009) and Engaged Teaching in Theology and Religion (co-authored with Jennie Knight (2015).
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