DATE:        9/13/04
CONTACT: Donna Arterburn, (864) 656-0605                                                                                                          Bill Eden (864) 654-7804
WRITER:   Susan Bedingfield, (864) 656-3876

Diana Hayes to speak at Clemson’s Strom Thurmond Institute

CLEMSON – Diana L. Hayes, noted researcher, speaker and scholar, will speak at the Strom Thurmond Institute, Clemson on Sept. 30 at 7:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

Hayes will discuss “Faith of our Mothers: Womanist God Talk,” which is the perspective of African American women as they reflect on their lived experience in the light of the Gospels.

Her method of inquiry is a “contextual theology” that arises out of a given context of women descended from an African background and the experience of slavery and its aftermath in the U.S.A.

Hayes is the first woman to earn a Doctorate of Sacred theology from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. She recently was awarded the U.S. Catholic 2001 Award for Furthering the Role of Women in the Church. She is an Associate Professor of Theology at Georgetown University.

She is the first speaker in a new Clemson lecture series entitled “Women and the Sacred.” For more information on the series, check out www.womanandthesacred.com.

A discussion of Hayes’ book, “Hagar’s Daughters: Womanist Ways of Being in the World,” will be held in afternoon sessions on Sept. 16, 23 and 30.

Sponsors are Calhoun Honors College , Catholic Student Association, Clemson Campus Ministry Association, Clemson Wesley Foundation, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Gantt Intercultural Center , Lutheran Campus Ministry, Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, Department of Philosophy and Religion, the Robert J. Rutland Center for Ethics, Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs, The One World Project, Apalache, and Winchester Society, a Unitarian Universalist Ministry.

For more information contact Donna Arterburn at (864) 656-0605 or visit the Strom Thurmond Institute’s web page at http://www.strom.clemson.edu/events/calhoun/.

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