Meet NAC member Regennia N. Williams
"The Neighborhood Advisory Council is comprised of a wonderfully diverse group of highly motivated individuals. Working with my NAC colleagues helps me gain a better understanding of Case Western Reserve programs and policies and encourages me to consider the ways in which the members of the campus community and individuals and institutions in the surrounding neighborhoods might work together for the common good."
-Regennia Williams
About Dr. Williams:
Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Distinguished Scholar of African American History and Culture at the Western Reserve Historical Society, where she recently launched the A. Grace Lee Mims Arts and Culture Oral History Project. An award-winning historian, her honors include Fulbright grants to support teaching and research in Nigeria and South Africa. She currently serves as a Research Fellow for the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at South Africa’s University of the Free State, and she is the President of the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Fulbright Association and the Center for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (The RASHAD Center, Inc.)
As a nonprofit educational corporation, The RASHAD Center, Inc. creates, supports, and promotes arts and humanities programs through performances of Black sacred music, popular and scholarly publications, and the Ohio-based Praying Grounds Oral History Project.
Dr. Williams has conceived, organized, and directed numerous public programs and academic conferences, including those related to the works of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Karla F C Holloway, Zora Neale Hurston, and Duke Ellington. From 1993-2015, she served as a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University, where she earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor and established the RASHAD Scholarship Endowment. She has also taught part-time at Montgomery College, Macau Millennium College, Dyke College, Cuyahoga Community College, the University of the District of Columbia, and Ashland Theological Seminary (Cleveland campus, McCreary Center for African American Religious Studies).
Her published works include books, book chapters, and articles in scholarly journals, newspapers, and magazines, and she is the founder and editor of The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs and the Traditions & Beliefs newsletter. In 2021, her chapter on “Race, Religion, and Reconciliation: Academic Initiatives, Leadership Development, and Social Change” was published in Leadership for Change: Developing Transformational Student Leaders through Global Learning Spaces.