The Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech hosted a webinar, “Teach-In on Anti-Black State Violence,” on June 10.

Several faculty members in the department presented on their own research focus as it intersects with the subject. Those speakers included:

  • Brian Britt, a professor who focuses on religious traditions and their afterlives in modern and contemporary western culture. He has particular interest in the history of conscientious dissent.

  • Sylvester Johnson, a professor and the founding director of the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities. Johnson, who is also assistant vice provost for the humanities at Virginia Tech, is a nationally recognized humanities scholar specializing in the study of technology, race, religion, and national security.

  • Shaily Patel, an assistant professor who focuses on early Christianity. She dedicates her teaching to complicating easy assertions about the past, and about past Christians in particular.

  • Dominique Polanco, a research associate who seeks to increase diversity and inclusivity in the study of religion, culture, and art of Latin America. Polanco also works to bring attention to often-overlooked indigenous populations through her research, teaching, and mentorship of underrepresented student populations.

  • Balbir K. Singh, an assistant professor who focuses her research on women of color feminisms, Asian and Arab American studies, and race, religion, and empire. Singh is particularly interested in the convergence of racial, gendered, and religious embodiment with migration and policing under violent conditions of imperial and domestic security technologies.

Matthew Gabriele, professor and chair of the Department of Religion and Culture, moderated the discussion. His own research tends to focus on religion, violence, and apocalypse, whether manifested in the Middle Ages or the modern world.