Marla Frederick, a leading ethnographer and scholar focused on the African American religious experience, will become dean of Harvard Divinity School on January 1, President Claudine Gay has announced.
Frederick is currently the Asa Griggs Candler professor of religion and culture at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Prior to her appointment at Emory, she served on the Harvard faculty from 2003 to 2019, including as an assistant professor in the Department of African and African American Studies. In 2008, she was named the Morris Kahn associate professor and then as a tenured professor in 2010.
“We are thrilled to welcome Marla Frederick back to the University,” Gay said. “Her scholarship and her leadership have been distinguished by wide-ranging curiosity and engagement, and I am confident that those qualities, as well as her deep devotion to the mission of Harvard Divinity School, will make her an outstanding dean.”
During her previous 16 years at Harvard, in addition to her faculty appointments, Frederick served in a variety of leadership roles, including as interim chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, a member of the provost’s academic leadership forum and as director of graduate studies and chair of the admissions committee for the Department of African and African American Studies.
“I am honored to return to Harvard as the next dean of Harvard Divinity School,” Frederick said. “It is a place bustling with conscientious faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends who are committed to the work of justice and human flourishing informed by deep study.”
Frederick will succeed David Hempton who has served as dean since 2012. David Holland, the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, will serve as interim dean until Frederick steps into the role on January 1.
Originally from Sumter, South Carolina, Frederick earned her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College and her doctorate in cultural anthropology from Duke University.
She is the author or co-author of four books, including “Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global” and “Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith.” As general editor, she is currently curating, alongside five co-editors, an encyclopedia of the histories of historically Black colleges and universities.
