Hooks Academic Research fellow Dr. AnneMarie Mingo recently published two essays in leading academic journals. The first one, “Speaking to Stop the Silence: A Womanist Ethical Confrontation of Injustice,” published in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Mingo draws from four tenets of womanist theological ethics—radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self-love, and critical engagement—to argue that confronting injustice requires challenging the ways that we see, hear, advocate for, and remember Black women victims of state-sanctioned violence.

The second one, “Black and Blue: Black Women, ‘Law and Order,’ and the Church’s Silence on Police Violence,” published in the Religions journal, Mingo examines MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail arguing that King expands his critique to include reflect longstanding support of police violence in White communities and a form of sanction through the silence in Black communities centered around communal survival in the face of violent White power structures. Ultimately, she calls for leaders to be in proximate location to police violence so when they see it, they can be moved ethically to address it.

AnneMarie Mingo is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University, and an affiliate faculty member in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State.