Dr. Katherine Bassard addresses how to live out our ministry of reconciliation in a world that is increasingly polarized, divided and broken. This chapel is part of our ongoing Dialogue on Race and Diversity coordinated by the Black Student Union (BSU) and Multicultural and International Student Services (MISS).

Dr. Bassard is a recognized expert in African American Literature. She examines poetry, novels, speeches, sermons, and prayers by African American women from Maria W. Stewart to Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, discussing how such texts respond as a collective “literary witness” to the use of the Bible for purposes of social domination. Her recent publications include Spiritual Interrogations: Culture, Gender, and Community in Early African American Women’s Writing and Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. Dr. Bassard has received numerous awards and grants for her teaching and research efforts, including recognition by the Center for Teaching Excellence, Honor’s College, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, as well as from the Pew and Ford foundations. Holding degrees in English from Wake Forest University, VCU (MA), and Rutgers University (Ph.D.), Dr. Bassard has taught at the University of California Berkeley and since 1999 VCU, where she now serves as senior vice provost for faculty affairs.