Katharine Gerbner is a historian who examines how religion shapes – and is shaped by – race, politics, and technology. She examines religious practices that have been excluded from traditional definitions of religion and develops multilingual archival strategies to uncover stories that have been marginalized or forgotten. She is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of Minnesota.
“Archival Irruptions is a new model for how scholars can read colonial archives.”
– Dianne M. Stewart, author of Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad
“[Christian Slavery] should assume its place as a foundational text for early American studies of race and religion.”
– Paul Harvey, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Media
Katharine Gerbner makes historical research accessible to broad audiences. She has participated in documentaries, interviews, podcasts, and radio shows on many topics, including the relationship between Christianity and slavery, the history of race and religion, and the importance of archival research and history education in the age of AI.
PBS: “The Black Church” with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Dr. Gerbner offered historical background on the history of Christianity & Slavery as a guest expert in Episode 1 of The Black Church, a PBS documentary with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Watch the Trailer
C-SPAN: “Slavery and Quakers” at the Museum of the American Revolution
In a talk at the American of the Revolution in Philadelphia, Katharine Gerbner describes the complicated history of Quakers and slavery in the 17th century. Far from being abolitionists, most Quakers in this period accepted slavery.
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Ben Franklin’s World: Episode 206,
“Katharine Gerbner, Christian Slavery”
On Ben Franklin’s World, Dr. Gerbner described her research about the history of Christianity and slavery in the Atlantic World, explaining how Europeans changed their justifications for enslavement over time.
Listen Now
Adga Tome
Digital Project
Katharine Gerbner is co-creator of Adga Tome, a digital project about Damma, a formerly enslaved woman who composed the only known letter written by an African woman in the Gbe language during the eighteenth-century.
Damma’s words have never been translated – until now. This collaborative digital project examines Damma’s Gbe words for the first time, offering new insight into her identity, her homeland—“adga Tome”—and the experiences of an African woman in slavery and freedom during the early eighteenth-century.
Adga Tome is an immersive experience that brings readers into the letter that Damma composed, examining the significance of her words to open a door into her world. It is part of the New Terms for the Universe project, which “spotlights epistemologies specific to understudied local and transnational communities.”