The third annual Duke Graduate Conference in Theology on Sept. 25-26 will feature several current or former Duke Divinity School students serving as speakers and three faculty members moderating panel discussions.
The conference provides an annual forum for graduate students from Duke and other institutions to engage with each other and with leading thinkers in their fields to promote and foster friendships and the exchange of ideas among those studying the various disciplines that constitute theological knowledge.
Brett McCarty, a Th.D. student, and David Berka, an M.Div. student, will join Justin Ashworth, who graduated with a Th.D. in May, as speakers on one of several panels at the conference, which will be held at the Divinity School. Alumni Kate Roberts M.Div. '14, who is pursuing a Master of Social Work degree at UNC-CH, and Timothy McGee M.T.S. '09, a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at Southern Methodist University, are also presenting.
Divinity professors moderating a panel will be: Esther Acolatse, assistant professor of the practice of pastoral theology and world Christianity; Mary McClintock Fulkerson, professor of theology; and Luke Bretherton, professor of theological ethics and a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke.
The keynote speaker for the “Encounter” conference will be Dr. Reggie Williams, assistant professor of Christian ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Ill.
Williams’ research focuses on Christological hermeneutics and Christian morality. He has a particular interest in how the Western-world understanding of Christianity has been calibrated to a false ideal that corresponds with racialized interpretations of humanity, morality and Jesus. The professor is the author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. He will give the keynote address titled "Bonhoeffer’s Stellvertretung as a Way of Knowing" Friday at 6:15 p.m. in the Alumni Memorial Common Room.