CST Encounter Series: Traci C. West

Tested Loyalties: Christianity, Racism, and Gender Abuse

Friday, March 27, 2026
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium

Inspired by Pope Francis’s exhortation to create a “culture of encounter,” the institute designed the lecture series Encounter. By bringing leading scholars to campus, the institute creates an opportunity for engaging conversations grounded in the Catholic social tradition, enriching faculty and students, and ensuring that the University is a locus for these ongoing conversations on matters of justice and the common good in our fragmented time.

Rev. Dr. Traci C. West is Professor of Christian Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School (Madison, NJ).

Traci is the author of Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence (New York University Press, 2019), Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics (New York University Press, 1999), and the editor of Our Family Values: Same-sex Marriage and Religion (Praeger, 2006). She has also published many articles and book chapters on sexual, gender, and racial justice, gender-based intimate violence, and clergy ethics.

She has served on the editorial board of Journal for the Society of Christian Ethics, as co-editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, on the Society of Christian Ethics Professional Conduct Committee, and the editorial board of T&T Clark Studies in Social Ethics, Ethnography, and Theology.