Eric Lewis Williams: Silhouette Interview

Eric Lewis Williams, Ph.D. is Director of the Office of Black Church Studies and Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. 

Transcript

UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello, I am Nancy Lynn Westfield, Director of the Wabash Center. Welcome to Dialogue on Teaching, a Silhouette Interview. The silhouette conversations are sparked from a list of standardized questions. We have the good fortune to hear firsthand from teaching exemplars about their teaching and teaching life. Today, our silhouette guest is Dr. Eric Williams. Dr. Eric Williams is Director of the Office of Black Church Studies, as well as Assistant Professor in Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Eric, thank you so much for being here for the interview. Thank you for having me. So we're just going to run through our 14 questions. Tell us what you think about each of these questions. Number one, when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A preacher and a pastor. Say

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more. Yeah, since much, I was always fascinated by the preacher. The preacher told stories. The preacher convened people. The preacher comforted the people. The preacher loved the people. The people loved the preacher. The preacher helped us to... to think differently about the situations in which we found ourselves. And I just always, I was very close to my pastors growing up, and I thought that I would become a

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pastor someday. Number two, who was proud of you when you became a teacher?

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My entire community. Yeah, everyone was proud because... probably most of them thought I would be a preacher too. So thank God for someone who chose not to be a preacher, I guess. But yeah, so my family, I'm a first generation college graduate. And so that is very meaningful to my family. And all the people who invested in me and poured in me from my formative faith community, just so many people that have been made proud because of the journey that I've taken. And I wanna give a shout out to my deceased mother and father who were peacock proud of the choices that I made and the good fortune that I have experienced

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in my life. So somebody needs to write a book about the first generation college born that got PhDs in the first generation, which if we didn't know, how, I'm not gonna say common, but how many people have done that, we would say that would be impossible to do.

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But

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many, many colleagues, that is their story, that they are first generation and then went on to get the PhD in their own generation, which is fascinating to me. Number three, what's the best thing your mother taught you?

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The best thing my mother taught me was and how to treat others within the human family. And she modeled that for us, I mean, my mother, in a way that I've not achieved, obviously. She never spoke ill words of people. She was quite, quite extraordinary, but human kindness, I think, is what I would say, has been... something that's carried

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me all my life. Who has influenced your teaching for the better? I

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would say the late Dr. David Douglas Daniels III, Dr. William Clare Turner, and my doctoral advisor, Professor Athe Adogame, who is at Princeton Theological Seminary.

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What has surprised you about teaching, about the teaching life?

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What has surprised me about the teaching life is the joy that I experience when I teach. The joy of, you know, of creating and curating space for people to raise their questions and the freedom, empowering the students with the freedom to choose their own dialogue partners that you can put, you could bring different disciplines together bring individuals from different eras together and create different kinds of projects and different kinds of essays and creative works. So it's the joy and the freedom and the curiosity,

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I would say. Number six, what is a favorite nickname by which you are called by a loved one?

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Favorite nickname? There's just a couple of them. E-Dub was one. E-Lewis was another one. When I was a kid, I had an extremely long head. This is one I didn't like. I had an extremely long head. In fact, I grew up thinking I was going to die because my head was so big. Something your brothers and sisters told you. My brothers and sisters, when they wanted to really, really get under my skin, they would call me Bus and Longhead Lewis.

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That's

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mean. They'd call me Yellow Bus. Yellow Bus, come in

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here. No, no, no. And I'm sure you never got them back. I'm sure, I'm sure.

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But you survived it.

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And

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my body has grown into my head. That's real.

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My body caught up with my head.

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There was one of the youth in my community. His name was Brian. And Brian, his head was notably larger than his body.

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And

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Brian died very early. It was said that he had water on the brain. No one told me I had water in the brain, but because Brian died, I thought that because of the size of my head, I thought I was next. This is the problem with being a precocious

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child, paying attention.

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You just diagnosed yourself.

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Number seven, what profession other than teaching would you like to attend?

UNKNOWN 7:20

Um,

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So I've done the museum, the curatorial work. I've done teaching, but preaching and probably pastoring, I would say, if there was something else that I would attempt.

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So you've given up law school. You're not going back to law school. Going to

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law school.

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I'm not going back to school, period. Done it. Whatever it was. Whatever I have. That's it. That's what I got. That's what I'm going to live here with. We thank God. It's over. Number eight. Do you enjoy writing in longhand? And if so, what's your preference of ink pen or writing utensil?

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I do not enjoy writing in longhand because my penmanship is just, it's horrendous. In fact, my nieces and nephews, they would say, these were children, saying, Uncle Eric, You write like a child. Not

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a doctor. Not a doctor. A child.

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You just can't write. I'm the one that writes things. Someone has to help me to read what I've written. So, yeah, I'm grateful for the iPad and the Notes app. And I think I can.

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Illegible, right? Illegible.

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Give me a keyboard. I

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don't need a keyboard. Number nine. What's your superpower? My

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superpower? Kindness.

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I don't know.

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Man, I'm just going to be kind to you and hopefully we can come to some peaceful resolution. And if not, I'll still be kind to you. And we just want to, yeah, that's it. That's all I got.

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Number 10. Now, number 10 is an infamous question. Just listen carefully to number 10. Many of our listeners listen for the answer to number 10. What's your favorite cuss word?

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Favorite cuss word. When we say favorite, the one that intrigued me the most, I would say growing up. And when I see it used in popular culture, I think it's intriguing. It's damn. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, growing up in the context I grew up in, you know, they would often quote, you know, Mark 16, 16. I was

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going to say, you were in scripture, you're doing theology,

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you think about hell. But Samuel Jackson took it, he took it to another level. Yes, so no, I think that was the word. I love to see people use that in different contexts. That's always clever, I think.

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That's it? That's the only one? I have never heard you cuss.

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Yeah,

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I usually don't. Yeah, I usually don't. I say all the time. My father would say people who cuss have a limited vocabulary. Number 11. How have you survived certain violences in teaching? Fighting

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back. I am... Sometimes we choose not to fight back, but that's how we disappear.

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And so

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there's some battles that you have to fight. And I have had one of those lives where I've had some battles that I had to fight and I had to put everything on the line. And yeah, I think you know a bit about some of the battles that I fought.

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And won.

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Fought and won. I'm still here. Yes,

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indeed. Number 12. What healings have you witnessed or received in teaching or the teaching life?

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That's a beautiful question.

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What

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healings have I received or... Or witnessed. Received or witnessed. Yeah, I've had some experiences in the classroom in teaching where... people who had been carrying things with them, things that weighed them down, that they felt some kind of breakthrough. I've had experiences with people who had, you know, they had emotional outbursts in class. I remember one time when I was teaching in Ashland, at Ashland Theological Seminary, the Detroit campus, I was talking about Job and I was talking about this notion, this Deuteronomistic notion of curses and blessings, that if you do good, these good things, if you do good, these good things will happen to you. You do bad, these bad things will happen to you. And I was teaching and there was a, she was an older woman in my class and she As I was teaching, I was talking about Job, how Job frustrates that model. Because here he's making sacrifices for his children every day. He's playing by the rules. And even though he's playing by the rules, destruction comes and calamity comes to his home. And the student began to weep. In fact, she began to weep and wail in class. And I... I said, this is a good time for us to take a break. So when everyone left, I went and sat with her. And she told me that she had three children and that all three of her children had been killed in the streets of Detroit. And that day, that Job story really resonated with her. But also, I would say that... in my readings and what I learn from the students, the perspectives they bring to text, I find them to be healing in many ways. I

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believe the classroom space, similar to the sanctuary space during worship, the classroom space during teaching can be equally as sanctifying, spirit moving, aha producing, and healing.

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Yes, indeed.

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If we could figure out how to use our priestly functions to open those doors for our students. And that's what I hear you just did.

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Yes, indeed. And I tell you that the students, they come to these classes, but they bring tremendous gifts. They bring tremendous insight and tremendous perspective. And when the context is such, they can share. that I think a lot of really powerful things happen to those that are present.

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Yeah. Number 13. What have you enjoyed most about the teaching life?

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Well, the intellectual curiosity is marvelous, but also the opportunity to travel and to have dialogue partners in different parts of the world. to be able to share your work with different cultures and different audiences and to receive perspectives from people from well beyond your cultural context. I think that that's a precious gift. And I think that that's a beautiful thing.

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Last question. At the conclusion of your teaching career, so 50, 90 years from now, not next semester, at the conclusion of your teaching career, what miracles will you have performed?

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Well, I will hope that through my teaching that someone will have been set free. I will hope that blind eyes may have been opened. I will hope that in my teaching that I've awakened, that God has used me by some miracle to awaken someone to faith and to life. And that through my work and my witness, my scholarship, that I will, by some miracle, leave the world a little better off than I found it.

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Eric Williams, thank you for this conversation. Thank you. To our listeners, we encourage you to subscribe to the Wabash Center newsletters. Teaching Hub and Media Drop will keep you informed. Also, look on our website for information about our cohort experiences, our educational resources, as well as our regranting program. A special thanks to sound engineer Paul Myrie and podcast producer Rachel Mills. The music which frames the Silhouette podcast is the original composition of Paul Myrie. Wabash Center for more than 30 years is exclusively funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. And we are out. How was that, Paul?