Andrea Estrada
Department of Black Studies
Terence Keel

Terence Keel, an assistant professor of history and of Black studies at UC Santa Barbara has received this year’s Harold J. Plous Award.

One of the university’s most prestigious faculty honors, the award is given annually to an assistant professor from the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences who has demonstrated exceptional achievement in research, teaching and service.

Presented by the College of Letters and Science, the award was established in 1957 to honor the memory of Harold J. Plous, an assistant professor of economics.

Keel will highlight his research when he delivers the Plous Lecture next spring.

Said Vilna Bashi Treitler, professor and chair of Black studies: “Our department sees Terence Keel as someone who bridges disciplinary boundaries as he creates new conversations around science, race, religion and gender. He uses historical research to show how outdated notions of racial difference rooted in early Christian ideology gain new life in public health thinking and, for example, affect the distribution of health and medical programs to African Americans and women. He is also skilled as a teacher, and generous in his contributions to professional activity and university and public service. We are thrilled that Terence Keel was chosen for the Plous Award.”

“It is surely an honor to receive this award and I am grateful for the support I’ve received from my colleagues and the administration since arriving at UCSB,” said Keel. “To my knowledge I am the first African American and first Black studies faculty member to receive the Plous since assistant professors began receiving the award in 1958. So I am delighted to be formally recognized as adding to the rich institutional history of transformative scholarship at UCSB.

Before becoming a faculty member at UCSB in 2012, Keel completed both his Master of Theological Studies and his Ph.D. in religious studies at Harvard University. A historian and scholar of religion, he has written widely about the concept of the human as well as the history of racism and its connections to modern science, religion and political power.

Source and Full Article:
The Current