Dr. Marla F. Frederick is an expert in Cultural Anthropology. Her thought-provoking dissertation entitled, “The Cultural Politics of Religious Experience: African American Women’s Spirituality and Activism in the Contemporary US South” asked particular questions about how spirituality impacts women’s understandings of how to negotiate the social and economic conditions of their lives and that of their communities. These probing questions are situated in the broad context of the anthropology of religion and the more specific study of African American religion.

 Dr. Frederick’s academic lecture experience encompasses teaching university level courses in Black Gender Studies, Race and Gender in the African Diaspora; Religion in the African Diaspora; Black Women in U. S. Society; Liberation Ideologies in the African Diaspora and Black Religion in the U. S.; Christianity in Cross Cultural Perspective; African American Intellectual History; Culture and Thought; Introduction to the Cultural Anthropology and Introduction to African American Studies.

 Her commitment to scholarship and extraordinary research skills have afforded her opportunities to work in the following academic positions: Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at The University of Cincinnati; Affiliate Faculty in the Women’s Studies Department also at the University of Cincinnati; Instructor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University; Teaching Assistant to Naomi Quinn, Ph. D., Orin Starn, Ph. D., and Pamela Brayboy-Jackson, Ph.D. in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University; Research Assistant for the North Carolina Public Sphere’s Collaborative Research Project in Ethnographic Field Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University.

She is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships and awards:

• Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University;
• Duke Endowment Fellowship, Duke University;
• John Hope Franklin Distinguished Teaching Fellowship, Duke University;
• Women’s Studies Race and Gender Research Award, Duke University; and
• North Carolina Public Sphere’s Research Fellowship, UNC Chapel Hill.

 Dr. Frederick earned a BA in English (magna cum laude) from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and a Ph. D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Paper Presentations

“Faith and the Black Public Sphere” – Guest Lecturer, Barnard College, Spring 2001

 “Faith and the Black Public Sphere” – Religion and Politics Series, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, Spring 2001

“The Cultural Politics of Religious Experience” – Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL, 1999 

“African American Women’s Spirituality: Paradigm of Activism” – Conversations Series, Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University, 1999

“The Question of Progress: Race and Gender in Rural North Carolina” – Annual Meetings Society for Cultural Anthropology, San Francisco, CA, 1999

“ ‘Up on the Uprise’: Race and Privilege Amidst Economic Restructuring in Eastern North Carolina” – Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, PA, 1998

“Changing Rural Landscapes” – Panel Discussant, Academic Session of the Second Annual Black Land Loss Conference, Tillery, NC, 1998

“Borders as Agents of Exclusion: A Case in Halifax County North Carolina”- Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, 1997

“African American Women’s Spirituality: Forms of Empowerment” Women’s Studies Conference, Duke University, 1996

“African American Women’s Autobiography: Paradigms of Activism” DANA Research Seminar, Duke University, 1994