The Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School will host its annual Pauli Murray/Nannie Helen Burroughs Lecture Series on Women & Religion featuring Yolanda Pierce, Ph.D. The Pauli Murray/Nannie Helen Burroughs Lecture Series features women theologians and religious scholars whose work and ministry emphasize the critical intersections of race, gender, and class, as they relate to the transformative uplift of church and society.

Yolanda Pierce is a professor and dean of Vanderbilt University School of Divinity. She is a scholar of African American religious history, religion and literature, womanist theology, race, and religion.

Pierce's writing has appeared in Time magazine, Sojourners, and The Christian Century, and she is the author of books Hell Without Fires and In My Grandmother’s House.