History professor wins $100,000 award for religion book

History professor Barbara Savage has been honored for her work in finding the nexus of religion, politics and race.

Savage was presented the 2012 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion last week for ideas set forth in her book, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion.

The award, given by the University of Louisville, carries a $100,000 prize. It is awarded annually to outstanding scholars in the fields of religion, music competition, world order, psychology and education. The award given for religion is also presented in part by the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Her book — published in 2008 — analyzes the role black religion plays in their political struggle and profiles African-American religious and political leaders. It also highlights the responsibilities of African-American churches in the political arena.

School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell is pleased that Savage was honored for her book. “I am delighted by this recognition of Barbara Savage’s ground-breaking work on the politics of black religion,” she wrote in an email. “This award and the many recent awards to our distinguished History faculty are a sign of the great strength of that department, in research as well as teaching.”

Savage was not available for comment on the award.

“Besides explaining why it is misleading to speak of ‘the black church’ given the enormous diversity among African American congregations, Savage challenges the popular belief that black churches have been prophetic and politically active throughout history,” according to Susan Garrett, who directs the Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

This year, Savage competed against sixty six other nominees and her work went through three rounds of judging that spanned over a year before she was finally named the winner, assistant to the Grawemeyer Award director Melisa Scarlott wrote in an email.

“Dr. Savage’s winning idea has been … found to be the work that best demonstrates the intent and spirit of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for 2012,” she added.

Savage has been teaching history at Penn since 1995. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Savage also holds a doctorate in history from Yale University and a law degree from Georgetown University. She has also received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion and New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center on Black Culture.

For her next project, Savage is working on a biography of Merze Tate, a female professor at Howard University from 1942 to 1977. Tate was one of the few black academics of her time.

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