Rosetta E. Ross, Ph.D.

Rosetta E. Ross, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita
Faculty, Philosophy and Religious Studies

Contact Info

Biography

Rosetta E. Ross, Ph.D., is a professor emerita of Religious Studies at Spelman College, where she transformed the College’s study of religion into a diverse religious studies curriculum. Her scholarship explores religious consciousness in Black women’s social action and in Africana women and religions. Ross is author of Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights, co-author of The Status of Racial and Ethnic Clergywomen in the United Methodist Church (with Jung Ha Kim), co-editor of Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood (with Rose Mary Amenga-Etego), and co-principal investigator (with Monique Moultrie) on the Henry Luce Foundation grant for the Garden Initiative for Black Women’s Religious Activism.

Her current research explores Black Religious Consciousness and Women in the NAACP from 1927 to 1979. Ross organized conferences on Africana women and religion in Ghana, the United States, and Brazil. She founded The Daughters of the African Atlantic and is the founding editor of the peer-reviewed e-journal Black Women and Religious Cultures. An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, Ross served as a pastor and an associate pastor in South Carolina and Georgia.

Education

  • Ph.D., Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
  • M.Div., Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Cum Laude.
  • M.A., Howard University.
  • B.A., The College of Charleston

Courses Taught

  • Introduction to the Study of Religion
  • Theory and Methods in Religious Studies
  • Archival Research and Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement
  • Womanist and Feminist Theologies
  • Love and Christian Traditions

Select Publications



  • “There Remains Only Constant Struggle”: Scholarship as Telling Stories of Radical Black Subjectivities. In Vincent Wimbush, ed., Scripturalizing Modernities through Black Flesh, Lexington Press, 2023.

  • “Optimal Health for Their Whole Lives: Reflections on Social Ethics, Freedom, and Black Women’s Health,” Journal of Healthcare, Science, and the Humanities, VII, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 53-64.

  • “Now, Who Are Your People’: Continental and Diasporan African Women Encounter Each Other” in Transkulturelle Begegnungen und Interreligiöser Dialog [Transcultural Encounter and Interreligious Dialogue] ed. Uta Andrée, Ruomin Liu, Sönke Lorberg-Fehring, 249-266, Missionshilfe Verlag, 2017.

  • “Ruby Hurley, U.S. Protestantism, and NAACP Student Work, 1940 to 1950” in From Every Mountainside: Black Churches and the Broad Terrain of Civil Rights, ed. R. Drew Smith, 65-83, State University of New York, 2013.

  • “Black Theology and the History of U.S. Black Religions: Post Civil Rights Approaches to the Study of African American Religions,” Religion Compass 6, no. 4 (2012): 249–261.

  • “Overcoming Misinterpretation and Irrationality: Doing Ethics at the Intersection of Social Justice, Liberation, and Civil/Human Rights” in Religious Education, 107 no. 3 (May-June 2012): 241-245.

  • “Overcoming Christianization: Thoughts on Reconciling Spiritual and Intellectual Resources in African American Christianity” in Ethics that Matter: African, Caribbean, and African American Sources, ed. Marcia Y. Riggs and James Logan, Fortress, 2012.

  • “John Howard Yoder on Pacifism” in Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Miguel A. De La Torre, Westminster/John Knox, 2011.

  • “Rural Southern Black Women in the United States” in The Peoples’ History of Christianity, Volume 7, ed. Mary Farrell Bednarowski, Fortress, 2008.

  • “Sojourner Truth,” in Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, ed. John H. Moore, Gale, 2007.

  • “Lessons and Treasures in Our Mothers’ Witness: Why I Write about Black Women’s Activism” in Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society, ed. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, New York University, 2006.

  • “The Civil Rights Movement” in Encyclopedia of Women in Religion in America, Volume 3, ed. Rosemary Keller and Rosemary Radford Reuther, Indiana University, 2006. This collection won the 2006 American Historical Association’s Waldo G. Leland Prize and the 2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award.

  • “What Has Happened to Us?” with Marsha Snulligan Haney and Tumani Mutasa Nyajeka in Africentric Approaches to Ministry: Strengthening Urban Congregations in African American Communities, ed. Ronald Peters and Marsha Snulligan Haney, University Press of America, 2006.

  • “Eleanor Holmes Norton” in African American Lives, ed. Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford, 2004.

  • “Marian Wright Edelman” in African American Lives, ed. Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford, 2004.

  • “Harriet Tubman” in African American Lives, ed. Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Oxford, 2004.

  • “Health Care and the Moral Imagination: Considering the Kind of Society We Want to Be” in New Conversations: Medical Technology and Christian Decision-Making, Special Edition, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner (Fall 2002): 67-72.

  • “Feminist Ethics” in Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 2, ed. Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milic Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, Lukas Vischer, Eerdmans-Brill, 2000, 149-151.

  • “Religion and Public Life: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as a Metaphor for What Love Requires” in Quarterly Review 20, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 125-139.

  • “Religious Responsibility and Community Service: The Activism of Victoria Way DeLee” in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, ed. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, Wadsworth, 4th edition, 2000.

  • “Mancherlei Schriftgebrauch in der Womanistischen Theologie: Eine Ubersicht der Bibelinterpretationen von Vier Schwarzen Frauen,” [“Some Uses of Scripture in Womanist Theology: An Overview of Biblical Interpretation by Four Black Women”] Transparent: Zeitschrift fur die Kritische Masse in der Rheinischen Kirche 12, no. 53 (March 1999): 16/1-16/12.

  • “Grace” in the Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, ed. Letty Russell and Shannon Clarkson, Westminster John Knox, 1996.