University hosts Tracey Hucks to speak

By EMMA VALES news Writer

o n Thursday, Feb. 23, n otre d ame hosted a c olloquy on b lack c hurch s tudies, consisting of a roundtable discussion and luncheon, followed by a talk from keynote speaker Tracey h ucks.

h ucks is the v ictor s . Thomas professor of Africana religious studies at h arvard d ivinity s chool and the s uzanne Young m urray professor at h arvard r adcliffe Institute for Advanced s tudy. h er talk was titled “ s acred b odies, s acred b ones: r eligion, d eath and r ace in the African d iaspora.” m ark s anders, the inaugural director of n otre d ame’s initiative on race and resilience and professor in the Africana studies department, welcomed h ucks to the stage. h e also added that a Ph. d . tends to be narrow in scope, with the student becoming an expert in one area — which Page noted was a very different mindset than that of a professor. h ucks began by quoting s anders’ philosophy on Africana studies saying “the African American cultural experience is one that can’t be bound by national boundaries, populations and ideas.” s he noted those ideas can change in different uses and contexts. h ucks addressed the “diaspora” that the title of her talk references, emphasizing that the understanding of diaspora is not a single, historical moment, but one of continuous diasporas as “movement, migration and travel,” as well as “imagination through thought culture, production and political struggle.” h ucks was born and raised in h arlem, n ew York, what she said considers one of the “ b lack meccas of the diaspora.” In the fall of 2022, h ucks published “ o beah, o risa, and r eligious Identity in Trinidad”—a two-volume book exploring o beah and o beah is defined as “a form of belief involving sorcery, practiced in parts of the West Indies, s outh America, the southern U. s . and Africa,” according to the o xford d ictionary. h ucks’ book focuses on o beah practices and its reception in Trinidad.

Theological Foundation in 2006.

“[ m y Ph. d .] was fascinating because as an historian, I was really interested in origins and really [interested] in antiquity. And so, going from the study of history to the study of languages and their history and the history of the ancient n ear e ast and the cultural background of the b ible, it was a good choice of program and a good experience,” he noted.

“You go off into academia, and you have to become, in a sense, a generalist in your overall discipline again, while not losing the passion for that narrow area that you spent a couple of years doing intensive research on,” he explained.

Page continued speaking on how it is essential to cultivate motivated intellectuals to create a culture of clear communication of large ideas to the public.

“There’s also an important role for translational endeavors to uphold in other venues and in other settings because we really need to plant the seeds for intellectual engagement and the general public in ways that we’ve not done so before,” he said.

Yoruba- o risa from the colonial era to the present.

In her talk, h ucks gave a comprehensive history of the formation of Trinidad as a slave colony and how o beah practices were attacked. In colonial Trinidad, a law stated that “any n egro practicing any form of witchcraft will be put to death.”

General Thomas Picton, the first b ritish governor, supported colonial laws that were against African religions, or what the b ritish colonists understood o beah to be. b ritish colonists and Picton viewed o beah practices as dangerous and lethal means of witchcraft. h ucks presented an authentic receipt of the brutal punishments given to people in Trinidad that were caught practicing o beah. The punishments on the receipt ranged from being led through the town and pilloried to being decapitated. h ucks said she finished writing this book in the midst of the “racial pandemic” in the summer of 2020, following the George Floyd murder. The final chapters of the book focused on racism today in America, particularly in 2020 and h ucks’ feelings during this time. In the fall of 2022, it was published in the r eport of the s teering c ommittee on h uman r emains in h arvard University’s m useums c ollection. It was also shown in “The Legacy of s lavery at h arvard” publication in 2022. h ucks read a few passages from the afterword of the book to close her presentation, including one quote from the last page.

“I know there’s a lot of death circulating this,” h ucks admitted, after spending a great amount of the presentation discussing the punishments around o beah. b ut, she emphasized the importance of knowing what those practicing o beah experienced.

“Perhaps most true is that African religions, in general, represent an infinite resource of spiritual power and weaponry of shielding and sustaining protection,” she said. “And of righteous resistance to the religious violence and enduring beliefs of white racecraft.”

Contact Emma Vales at evales@nd.edu

From

Harvard to California, from California to South Bend

After graduating from h arvard, Page took a job at c alifornia s tate University in s acramento, c alifornia, which he said was a “good offer, because it was the only offer.” There, he was an assistant teaching professor in the department of humanities, and he taught an introductory, required history course. Approximately one year into his job, n otre d ame reached out and offered him a tenure-track position in the theology department.

“It was a tough choice at that point because I had just moved from c onnecticut to c alifornia and thought I would be there for life. b ut the offer to come here and to be a part of a really nationally-renowned theology department with a number of colleagues who worked in liberal studies and were very well-known, that was too good to refuse. s o, I moved here in in 1992, and have been here ever since,” he explained.

Page joined the theology department as an assistant professor on the tenure track. s oon after he started, the dean of the c ollege of Arts and Letters asked him if he would become the director of the African and African American studies program. Page said he realized this opportunity would be in service to a cause greater than himself.

“That’s not my area of expertise or training, but I agreed to do it because I felt that it was an important thing to do at a really critical time in professional development,” he said. “Faculty of color at universities where they are often underrepresented, frequently are asked to take on service obligations that may not be within their area of expertise but represent opportunities to do something that would be of benefit to students, to their colleagues, to alumni … it would be a chance to do something that was of greater importance than the pursuit of tenure.”

Page emphasized that he felt he was carrying on the legacy of others who came before him and those who would come after him.

“I was very conscious of standing on the shoulders of other colleagues across a series of generations from 1970 until 2005, when the decision was made for it to be a department, and of being a steward of their dreams and their aspirations,” he said.

This position was Page’s first experience working with the administration. h e then served as an associate dean, a dean of first-year studies from 2005-2019, vice president and associate provost for undergraduate affairs from 2013-2022 and now, his current role. With each position, Page said he gained more insight.

“In each of those capacities, I got to learn more about the decision-making process, about budgeting, about the larger ecosystem in American higher education and how things function,” he said. “It’s all a call to service.”

Throughout his career, Page specifically made it a goal to always be involved in the lives of students at the University.

“I decided at the very beginning that I would not do administration or be involved in administration in a way that took me out of the classroom and away from students. b ecause if I did that, I would lose a sense of what the institution’s core mission was,” he said. “If you don’t have a sense, a visceral sense, in personal experience, in multiple areas of university life, then you’re kind of blind to some of the things that go on.” h e explained how valuable this connection has been to him — how those relationships are sometimes the reward themselves.

“At the end of the day, if people say that they trust or feel a connection to the work that I do, because they know that I stand in solidarity with them, that’s a huge reward in and of itself,” he reflected.

Throughout his time working at n otre d ame, Page commented how he has realized the sheer amount of work that is done, emphasizing “the hidden labor that goes into making a University like this an open, welcoming space.” Page also mentioned how he felt his view as an outsider arriving to the University is a real asset at times.

Looking toward the future, Page noted the 10year timeframe outlined in the University board of trustees’ task force report on d iversity, e quity and Inclusion.

“The first thing for me is to take seriously the charge that the trustees have given all of us in its report, ‘advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in n otre d ame — strategic framework,’ and ensuring that those principles within the report are my n orth stars for anything that I do in this role,” he said. “Thinking of ways that we can synergize our efforts over the next decade and help the University become the very best version of itself, that’s work that we all have to assume responsibility for.” s pecifically, Page emphasized his mission of helping n otre d ame reach its true potential in providing a welcoming environment for people of all races, ethnicities and genders.

“ h elping to build a beloved community in the sense that m artin Luther King Jr. imagined it and doing so, one person at a time, one dream at a time, one loving and compassionate act at a time … this is what will have to be top of the University’s agenda for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Undoing injustices ingrained in society is the driving force behind his motivation in coming to work every day, Page said.

“It’s taken us, as a country, more than 300 years to create the circumstances that promote social inequity and injustice. I think it may well take us multiple generations to undo that work, but it can be done, and I remain hopeful about it,” he noted. “That’s what keeps me up at night. It’s what energizes me every day, and it’s what makes these new goals so incredibly exciting.”